ACTION AGENDA
ACTION
STEP
1
Engage Every Citizen in Improving Their Neighborhood
Establish Community Action Planning Boards (CAPs) for each district
A high priority of our administration is community engagement and bringing voice to our neighborhoods. CAPs will be made up of neighborhood residents and community leaders, and will direct the planning, investment, and land use priorities in their neighborhoods. This will create a process for local engagement, decision making, problem solving, investment, and long-term planning. CAPs will focus on an active process of reshaping, redesigning, reinvesting and recreating communities. They’ll also use creative problem-solving to address the immediate needs of each neighborhood.
ACTION
STEP
2
Reforest the City
Plant 100,000 trees in the next ten years and transform vacant lots into productive green spaces
Planting trees improves the quality of our air and the resilience of our city while actively cooling the city. We’ll use vacant land in the City of Buffalo to establish large nurseries for future plantings, reducing costs and generating revenue for expanded operations. The majority of this work will be facilitated by City Action Corps crews (see Action Initiative #10), complemented by teams of volunteers from across the region. We will expand on the work of our Division of Forestry to expand our capacity to maintain, improve, and increase our forest canopy.
We will also engage CAP’s (Action Step #1)) to create long term strategic plans for the utilization of vacant lots in each district. Specific focus will be given to converting 350 acres of now vacant land (approximately 5000 vacant lots) into productive uses that support the goals of each district. We will utilize vacant lots for private side lots, expansion of our city’s greening programs (nurseries, greenhouses, etc.), expanded opportunities for local food production and to provide sites for infill housing.
Vacant land will also be leveraged as a resource for local energy production, waste management (expanded municipal composting), and for establishing our urban innovation center (Action Step # ).
ACTION
STEP
3
Turn Vacant Housing into Family Homes
Transform 10,000 vacant housing units into affordable, high quality, safe homes for Buffalo families
My administration will immediately assemble a Vacant Property Working Group to research and direct policy to enable this effort. Priority will be given to initiatives to support small landlords and developers who have currently vacant units. We need to prioritize initiatives like Good Cause Eviction to help tenants stay in their homes and expanded initiatives to improve housing access for low income and homeless residents.
My administration will immediately assemble a Vacant Property Working Group to research and direct policy to enable this effort. Priority will be given to initiatives to support small landlords and developers who have currently vacant units. We need to prioritize initiatives like Good Cause Eviction to help tenants stay in their homes and expanded initiatives to improve housing access for low income and homeless residents.