Local voters overwhelmingly approve ballot propositions

Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - Across Western New York, voters overwhelmingly gave a thumbs up to propositions asked on their ballot.

In the Town of Amherst, a proposal to alter the term limits law passed with 65% of voters giving it the thumbs up.

"There was a vote on term limits back in 2006, and the Supreme Court said that's not going to work and it has to go to referendum," said Amherst Town Supervisor Shawn Lavin. "The Town Board I think did its job, put it to referendum, gave residents the option to verify that's what they wanted, and they told us very clearly per the results what they did want."

Lavin says theoretically, the old term limits law would not have stood up to a legal challenge, so the recommendation was made to alter it.

In Cheektowaga, 90% of voters in the town voted yes to add term limits to the offices of Supervisor, Town Clerk, Highway Superintendent, and Council member.

In North Tonawanda, voters approved a new $18 million community center project.

As for the City of Buffalo, all 11 propositions on the ballot that were amendments to the City Charter passed. Among the propositions up for vote included the establishment of a protocol for filling a Common Council seat left empty in the event the Council President becomes Acting Mayor, a website for city boards, and the creation of task forces in the city.

"I had believed that a lot of those on the back of the ballot could have just been done legislatively, but from what the commission had stated was the human rights commission, and then ultimately an advisory board and then a task force will be impaneled," said Fillmore District Councilman Mitch Nowakowski on Wednesday with Joe Beamer on WBEN.

"I'm going to be working with the administration and the Common Council on what that looks like now that it passed. What does the language mean? What gets impaneled? For how long? But I do believe that a majority of that once they're impaneled, they won't be impaneled indefinitely. They're more there to impaneled citizens of the City of Buffalo to review sections of the Charter when it comes to those specific subjects to then produce legislative changes within the code."

So how much will these amendments going to cost the city in the end? That's something Nowakowski is seeking clarification on.

"Those are the technicalities, especially, that I'm going to be looking at. Is there going to be someone already in the administration or in a department of MIS [Management Information Systems] and in our computer systems? When there's a board or a task force, does it pertains more to the Council? Can we designate one of our own staffers and Council staff to do that work? Transparency is critical and important, but I also want to make sure that levels of bureaucracy don't go too far, especially that there's not an incurring expense when we have staff that could generate these reports that we already have in house," Nowakowski noted.