BUFFALO, N.Y. — Mayor Byron Brown resigned after leading the City of Buffalo for 19 years, serving as the longest-tenured mayor in the City’s history.
Now, Common Council President Christopher Scanlon steps in as Acting Mayor. 2 On Your Side’s Pete Gallivan and Claudine Ewing walked with him throughout the city he now leads: a city that still has a large budget deficit and a high poverty rate.
After serving for 12 years as the South Buffalo District Common Council member and Council President for nearly one, Scanlon says he will “deliver” for the Queen City.
PETE GALLIVAN: Walking through South Buffalo, your old district, what goes through your mind right now with the ascension to the Mayor's Office?
ACTING MAYOR CHRISTOPHER SCANLON: First I have to make sure everyone realizes [South Buffalo] is still my current district. I know there’s a lot of conversation about that.
PG: We've seen a lot of momentum. I remember my grandmother lived over off of Abbott and this section of Seneca St. was one of my boyhood homes. It had a down period and it's coming back, the momentum, so that momentum you got to keep that going right?
SC: Yeah, absolutely. This area here in South Buffalo in the 1950's, 1960's that was Downtown South Buffalo. Shops door-to-door, lining the street. 20, 25 years ago you would hear things like don't go over on Seneca St., but over the course of the past 10 years we've seen a lot of revitalization here.
We're standing across the street from Shea's Seneca, the fantastic job that Jake Schneider and his team did. We're next door to the Old Bank of America building, which is opening up [October 17] as The Caz, a brand new music venue here in South Buffalo.
PG: What lessons [in South Buffalo] can you take and put across the city as an acting mayor?
CS: I think it's the one that I've always kind of preached during my time in office and that's collaboration. You can't come out to a certain area or certain commercial strip and tell people what you're going to do, you've got to get buy-in. You got to talk to the property owners, the business owners, the neighbors on the adjacent streets, things of that nature, and get everyone on the same page and that's what we did here.
CLAUDINE EWING: I'm glad you said that because that's one of the things that I think people are concerned about. Some areas have prospered, other areas have not. Is this something you want to replicate in East Buffalo, West Buffalo, even the Northside?
CS: We can't have certain areas of the city flourishing and others floundering. So again, we've got to invest in every corner of the city of Buffalo, and that doesn't necessarily mean equally, but equitably.
PG: One of the criticisms going back to Mayor Griffin was, "He’s from South Buffalo, South Buffalo streets get paved first, plowed first, Caz diamonds were always the best in the city." Whether that was a fair perception or not, that was a perception. Is that on your mind given the fact that the South District is your home district and is going to be staffed with members of your former staff? Is that is that a concern that people are going to say "Oh, he's South Buffalo first?"
CE: That [South Buffalo] will get preferential treatment?
CS: It’s going to be very difficult for me to combat that: those rumors, things like that. All I can do is go out and do the job. I think that people, if they watch closely, they'll see that what I'm going to do here as Mayor is get out in every corner of the city, serve, represent, deliver for every corner of the city.
Click below for the full interview with Acting Mayor Scanlon.