Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - During the Buffalo Common Council's final meeting before heading for August recess on Tuesday, Councilmembers were set to approve an item on the agenda that enters the City of Buffalo into an agreement with the National Development Council (NDC) to administer a small business program with American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds.
This item would see $4.3 million in grants and $2 million in loans for small businesses in the city, totaling $6.3 million in assistance for those small businesses citywide who qualify through the agreement with the NDC.
However, a question brought up by Councilman Joe Golombek turned the item into a deliberation that lasted for nearly a combined hour. It surrounded an issue with a request for application (RFA) from the NDC, a New York City-based organization, and whether or not it needed to come from a Buffalo-based organization for it to legally be eligible.
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The NDC has partnered with the Buffalo Urban League and the Beverly Gray Center for the provision of technical assistance to small businesses with the $2 million loan they are providing as part of this item. Golombek questions why the RFA didn't come from either the Buffalo Urban League or the Beverly Gray Center.
"My concern is this is a very contentious issue, and I want to make sure that we're doing everything completely legal. I's dotted, t's crossed, and this is a little bit problematic for me," said Golombek during Tuesday's meeting. "I just, in doing some research, found out about this, actually while the Council meeting was going on, or I would have brought this up much earlier. But I don't want to approve something that gets challenged in court, we end up losing, and this money is kept in the longer limbo for our businesses in the City of Buffalo. That's my major concern with this. I just want to make sure that whatever we are doing is being done correctly, legally, by the book, etc."
To further complicate matters, when counsel on-hand for Tuesday's meeting reviewed the RFA request, it was said the City of Buffalo had the right to amend the RFA and remove the section where the organizations have to be located within the City of Buffalo so NDC could be either the primary third party facilitator or the lead facilitator.
That was something Councilmembers, including Council President Darius Pridgen did not want to mess with.
"I'm not going to change something that this Council later, if this thing fails and is challenged, then it's the Council did it. No Councilmember here has interviewed Urban League, nobody's interviewed Beverly Gray, nobody's interviewed this company. Why would we change it? This is not our problem to eat," said Pridgen during Tuesday's meeting. "We've got a document, we've got a legitimate question, we've got answers, and the final answer was, 'We can amend it, we can change it.' I promise you whose name won't be on changing is something that I didn't know author, that I haven't been in a meeting, that I don't know anything about: Darius J. Pridgen's name won't be on it."
In the end, the Council came to an agreement to push the vote and send the item to the Committee of the Whole. There, the Council will reconvene later this week when they have all the correct information in-hand in order to make a vote that benefits small businesses in the City of Buffalo.
"If we're really trying to help the residents in our city, we should be getting this information so that people who are the lawmakers can make these good decisions, solid decisions. Today was just an example. We got these documents at the last minute, and there's a question that we had on the floor. This question should've been answered yesterday," said Councilman Rasheed Wyatt following Tuesday's meeting. "If you've been privy to our Finance Committee meetings, we've been asking about this over-and-over-and-over again. Now we're at the finish line, and we're still not done with it."
It's a frustrating matter for many Councilmembers, including Wyatt and Pridgen, because the Council just wants to get every dime eligible from ARPA funding out to the street for people and businesses that are hurting from not just the COVID-19 pandemic, but also this past winter's snowstorms to strike the city and more.
"We need to get the American Rescue Plan money out to the streets. There are people who have been waiting for two years, and I won't be pressed or pressured to move on something that even today, we were just receiving information hours before the meeting," Pridgen said following Tuesday's meeting. "We'll work hard on this, my colleagues are committed to work hard on this to get these needed dollars to the streets. But it has to be the right way.
"At the end of the day, if you don't utilize those dollars, you got to find those dollars somewhere, which could mean a higher tax increase in the next budget. It could mean the end of some services. Our citizens have been very clear: We want all of the services that we have. We don't want to be on every other week garbage, we want to make sure we have our fire department, all of these things that our citizens say, 'Don't cut it.' So it is a balancing act."
While Tuesday's bump in the road was not in the cards for the Common Council, both Pridgen and Wyatt feel confident a decision will be made before the end of the week when the Council goes to recess for the month of August.
"It seems to be the appetite of the Council before August, because a lot of money is tied up by us not voting today. There is some of the organizations who have been waiting. I want to be clear, we don't want to hold that up. We don't want to hold that up until September," Pridgen said. "We've been asking for two years. We need to move this money, and at the end of the day, we're going to stay on standby to come back into these chambers, work hard in our offices, figure this out, work with the administration and figure it out. But my priority, I'm going to be clear, obviously a majority of the priority of this Council is for small and struggling businesses to get a piece of this pie."
"I think we've got the will, many of us want this out. We're not going to hold this up any further, but we want to make sure it's clear. We want to make sure we're on solid footing legally, what we're doing is right. So I think that's fair," Wyatt added.
Also as part of Tuesday's meeting was set to be a continued discussion on the potential funding requested by the Braymiller Market of more than $562,000. That item has also been tabled to the Committee of the Whole later this week.
While the market continues to remain open along Ellicott Street, there continues to remain questions of whether or not Braymiller needs this kind of funding. Council President Pridgen says things have been relatively quiet in terms of the financials that show they actually need this kind of funding.
"Crickets," Pridgen said.
"We have seen some plans. It was told to me that this is needed sooner than later. There are two sides of the Braymiller argument, and we do have businesses and people downtown saying, 'We need them.' And we have people who are saying we don't. This was kind of the compromise that brought it together for us. If we're going to give one business $500,000, we have to give millions of dollars to small businesses. I don't know that answer."
Councilman Wyatt goes further to say they have still not received any written data or future plans regarding Braymiller. It continues to remain only what people have told the Council, despite asking for plans on paper.
"Mr. [Paul] Ciminelli has offered $500,000, he should just give them the $500,000. It impacts his facility, so instead of him waiting on the city, he could just give the $500,000. We don't have any understanding of what that process is, we've just been told." Wyatt said. "We want things in writing, we want documentation. No longer are we just gonna go by what someone says, we need the documentation. We should have had the documentation yesterday, as it related to this whole process."
In the end, if Braymiller is set to receive the type of funding from the City of Buffalo as well as Ciminelli, Wyatt is hopeful other small businesses will be able to reap some benefits as part of the proposed funding.
"It's kind of unfair still that Braymiller is going to get $500,000-something from the city and another additional $500,000. I don't know if any other business that said they're going to come and match an additional amount for these other businesses, but Ciminelli has done that. Maybe someone will do that. That would be a nice thing, because we know those dollars are definitely needed for these small businesses," he said.
There has been no announced date or time when the Common Council will reconvene for the Committee of the Whole.
You can listen to the entire deliberation during Tuesday's Common Council meeting available in the player below: