The Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority located in Buffalo, NY has developed a bus shelter with a living roof. The shelter roof contains short, hardy succulent plants called sedum in shades of green, yellow, blue-green, brick red and burgundy. In addition to the plants, the roof also contains a solar panel, that illuminates an ad onRead… Read more »
Every year (since 2010) the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation located at Harvard University releases a list that recognize and promote creative government initiatives and partnerships. This year the Ash Center recognized 111 innovative government initiatives as Bright Ideas. The list contains creative initiatives from all levels of government—including school districts, county, city,Read… Read more »
Buffalo Councilmembers Michael LoCurto and David Rivera have introduced a Resolution seeking to explore the possibility of utilizing a process called Participatory Budgeting in the City of Buffalo. Participatory Budgeting allows citizens to decide how a municipalities budget funds are spent. Participatory budgeting involves several steps: 1) Community members identify spending priorities and select budgetRead… Read more »
The Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority (NFTA) has an important public mission. Thousands of people (many of them low-income) depend on the NFTA for bus and train transportation service. The Buffalo News has an amazing article about a recent meeting where a discussion took place about fixing a broken escalator at an NFTA subway station. TheRead… Read more »
The fact that Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown has $1 million dollars in his campaign war chest is good news for the mayor but bad news for the citizens of Buffalo. It means there will not be a real election for mayor of Buffalo next year. No challenger will be able to compete in a significantRead… Read more »
In Los Angeles city officials want to spend $10 million dollars to do a three year survey of sidewalks to determine which need repair. Citizen Peter Griswold wants to save that money by creating Volunteers for Sidewalk Brigades to complete the sidewalk survey. As reported in a Los Angeles Timesarticle Griswold sates “There are soRead… Read more »
Committees/boards are a necessary evil for most organizations as a way to focus efforts and get things done. Local governments have a lot of committees/boards, for example the Town of Amhers, NY (population 122,000) has 35 of them. The Town of Tonawanda, NY (population 73,500) has 28 committees/boards. I don’t know what the right numberRead… Read more »
IBM as a company has years of experience helping cities around the world improve how they deliver services. A white paper published by IBM titled “How to Transform a City: Lessons from the IBM Smarter Cities Challenge”, provides 15 lessons for leaders looking to transform how their cities operate: 1. Be Bold- Even Audacious– SetRead… Read more »
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has frequently advocated for evaluating the success of government programs. In continuing his performance based efforts, New York is the first city in the nation to test social impact bonds as a way to pay for government programs. local governments utilize bonds to pay for expensive items such asRead… Read more »
Since 2010 seven municipalities nation wide have filed for bankruptcy. California has the largest number of municipalities filing for bankruptcy with three. According to several recent reports, many local governments in New York are in serious financial trouble. – Rochester used a one-time, $15 million in state aid to reduce its $40 million deficit thisRead… Read more »