We get letters…

From Brian Higgins of the city’s inspections department. This email was sent to me from a city e-mail address at 10:06 a.m. The ip is 129.44.133.83, which DNSStuff identifies as the City of Buffalo.

how conveniently you hide behind your website, taking pot shots at city officials without printing your name or address – you are the kind of brave person who yells “fuck you” out the window while driving 50 mph.

My address is irrelvant. My name is readily available to anyone with google. I don’t put it out there all the time, but it’s not exactly a state secret. City officials are paid handsomely in salary & benefits to do their jobs without regard to personal preference, or any sort of vindictiveness or vendetta. But that’s what happened here. And no one took potshots at you – you walked right into this one. Appointed city officials (with myriad political connections), whose motives are suspect, deserve – and should expect – every shot of pot they get. And then some.

Why are you defending your boss? Let him defend himself.

i find it funny that you cite the control board and the partnership as two groups unhappy with the reform of the city’s permits and inspection dept. as we all know, the partnership is the all knowing savior of buffalo; the changes in buffalo since its inception are to numerous to mention here although i would like to list their top three:

1. ???
2. ??
3. ?

I agree with you. And I didn’t cite anything except Buffalo Report’s opinion as to your boss’ management skills. That grey bar means I’m quoting someone else. They weren’t my words. Nevertheless, except for throwing stones back at the Partnership, (at whom I’ve thrown stones of my own, if you’d bother to read around a bit), you have no real critique of that cited quote’s content.

have you visited the dept of permits and inspection svcs. lately? have you ever? do you know the n.y.s. building code? have you ever obtained a building permit?

What on earth does that have to do with anything? I haven’t visited your department because I have no need to. I don’t know the Building Code, but I: 1. know where to find it; and 2. have no need to know it.

If you want to be pissed off because I run a blog and post my opinions freely, that’s fine. You can even say I’m an asshole who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. That’s fine, too. But I’m not a public official or a public employee, so what I do and don’t do is none of your concern.

i am guessing that you haven’t, and neither has harvey garrett. he was featured on a television show 2 years ago for the beautiful remodeling job he has done on his homes interior … all without permits. he has been restoring his houses’ exterior one board at a time for seven years; with a track record like that, maybe we should put him on the waterfront commission or the peace bridge rebuild.

Has he been cited for doing work without permits? If so, then fine. If not, then why not? The gripe, Mr. Higgins, isn’t with Harvey getting cited for valid violations. The gripe is that his case miraculously jumped to the top of the list – ahead of 500+ other violations. He didn’t have a deadline imposed as to when the preexisting violations had to be completed, so what’s your point?

The most efficient Buffalo City inspector ever didn’t re-inspect Garrett’s house until after his critique of your department appeared in the Buffalo News. “Washington Clinton” (is that your alias?) sent an anonymous letter from ECMC that very day, and Garrett’s house was very, very rapidly inspected the very next day by an inspector whom Garrett had critiqued in court. (Care to enlighten us?) Garrett’s case was then fast-tracked to Housing Court. 500 case backlog. If that doesn’t smack of retaliation and an abuse of one’s power, then I don’t know what does.

your website touts its importance in a “new buffalo” which i am presuming is all about change vs. the status quo. it seems to me that your victim, harvey garrett is more status quo than about change.

The status quo in this town perpetuates ways of doing business that went out of style in the rest of the country sometime between 1960-1985. He works in housing court doing the work that unionized city workers should be doing, and he does it for free.

That’s the real gripe you guys have, and righteous indignation and retaliation are your tools.

how hypocritical that he sits in housing court all day and informs the judge of blights on neighborhoods or has the nerve to tell the judge that a contractor is doing work w/o permits or that a particular repair is taking too long.

you want change, you want to shed light on all that is bad in buffalo, let the world know that harvey is given the power to persecute people who do exactly what he does… and their reasons for slow progress are a little more valid than his… poverty, social issues, family issues.

is harvey taking so long because he doesn’t have the $$$? is he taking care of a sick mother? is he raising several children on his own while working several jobs? no. no. and no.

I’m interested your intimate knowledge of Harvey Garrett’s personal life. Tell me more.

Garrett doesn’t “persecute” anyone. He’s trying to get people who get paid good money by the city to do their jobs as effectively as possible. You guys got your revenge. Why not just let it go at that? It’s like a feeding frenzy by a bunch of sharks who smell blood.

yes their are problems with city government, the permits and insp. dept has lost 40+ people in the last several years due to budget cuts, yet the good people who work there try to enforce the building code in a poor city trying to balance people’s ability to comply with the rules of the n.y.s. and city code.

henry nowak is trying to get the job done and bringing new and innovative ways to running the court, however, cutting a break to a liaison, in my opinion, lessens the court’s credibility. i don’t think that ” new buffalo” wants a court without credibility, does it?

Your department lost 40 people? Buffalo has lost how many people over the past 10 years? Are you telling me that a Buffalo of 280,000 needs the same number of inspectors as it used to have when the population was 500,000?

Be clear about this: nobody – not even Garrett – is asking for Nowak to cut him a break. In fact, Nowak will have to recuse himself from Garrett’s case. We are, however, outraged that some hack or another is pissed that a private citizen is doing union work for free, so they thought, “I’ll show that do-gooder that he can’t mess with us.” Maybe not in those exact words, but that’s the message that those of us who live and work in this city have gotten – loud and clear.

looking forward to hearing from you,

brian higgins.

Right back atcha.

(Edit to repair some grammar)