Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - During a lengthy Buffalo Common Council Community Development Committee meeting on Tuesday, the council got a chance to get their questions addressed by city department commissioners on emergency preparedness and the city's Snow Plan.
Council members heard from Buffalo Fire Commissioner William Renaldo, Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia, Department of Public Works Commissioner Nate Marton, the newly-appointed Emergency Services Manager, Thomas Luby, and newly-appointed Fleet Manager, James Cross.
The main questions discussed ranged from communication, equipment and warming shelters.
South District Councilman Chris Scanlon kicked off the inquiries with a question regarding communication.
"Any changes you've made to your communication strategy, whether it's administration to council, administration of the public, administration with other levels of government?" Scanlon asked.
"I think all of us, and that includes Council, need to be more aggressive and upfront on how we communicate," said Department of Public Works Commissioner Nate Marton. "So that is part of our plan, to be out in front of it. As you saw last week with a potential storm that was [going to] be hitting today and tomorrow this week, potentially no Thanksgiving, we just put a notice out there might be something coming, be prepared. So that kind of, being ahead of the game this year is really what we're [going to] look at."
Marton also adds they will utilize systems like IPAWs to send alerts to your phone, and BuffALERT.
Scanlon also pressed on communication with between the city and New York State as well as Erie County, to which Marton replied that he was in discussions regularly with Erie County DPW Commissioner Bill Geary and will have continued discussions with state representatives from Department of Transportation District 5.
In addition, Scanlon had a question if there have been discussion to increase the number of warming shelters in the City of Buffalo. Last year, the City of Buffalo had nine warm shelters, one for each district. Many residents vocalized concerns with the council that that is not enough.
"We continue to have those discussions," replied Marton. "We do have dialogue with the schools [Buffalo Public Schools]. I know at their meeting last week, they passed the resolution allowing their superintendent to work through that process with us. And we'll have those discussions, we meet with their operations director regularly. Other shelters we will look at as well, but we do have one in each of the council districts as we start the season."
Those shelters will be staffed by members of the city's Division of Citizen Services Team and Buffalo Fire Commissioner Bill Renaldo adds that he wants to staff all warming shelters with two EMTs as well.
In addition, Renaldo highlighted a large number of equipment that will be added to by the end of this month and next year. Equipment that just arrived includes five snowmobiles that were donated to the city by Delaware North.
"The Buffalo Fire Department is well positioned to meet any unforeseen emergency and in the personnel and training category, I consider us green across the board. My command team and I have made a concerted effort to make and keep this department fully staffed. This strategy has served us well not only from a budgetary standpoint, but more importantly, from an emergency preparedness standpoint."
Council President Darius Pridgen later in the evening asked the newly-appointed Emergency Services Manager Thomas Luby if he read Buffalo's snow plan and if there was anything he would do to change it.
"No, I don't think so," said Luby.
"I'm disappointed," replied Pridgen. "I've shared it with three people who do this for a living, and just gently they're like, 'Yeah, we can do this. We do that.' I'm a little disappointed to hear there's nothing that needs to be added to this plan and I wouldn't do anything differently."
Luby explains that this is a start of a plan and things will have to be changed and altered based on what is happening.
"There will be times in the plan that we're going to alter and change based on what is going on with the incident as the incident and the dynamics of the incident changes. That's where all the emergency management, cooperation, coordination between Police, Fire, DPW and now our other agencies, county agencies and mutual aid etc. ... You can't put everything totally into the plan as it stands now, it's a starting point."
Committee Chair Joe Golombek said the snow plan will remain in committee to be discussed further.