Off Main Street: The offbeat side of the news
Paper cuts
Chances are good that no Holding Center inmate will read these words today.
Sheriff Timothy B. Howard’s crew at the downtown jail this week abruptly canceled the 55 copies of The Buffalo News they receive each day as reading material for their guests.
Deputies say the business has gone to USA Today, which hasn’t run unwelcome stories about the sheriff and his Jail Management Division.
Howard is frequently mentioned in News articles about the state and federal lawsuits against his Holding Center.
In editorials, the newspaper also said Howard, as the man at the top, should accept responsibility for jail problems.
So did the sheriff cancel the papers as retaliation? Off Main Street tried to reach the sheriff’s chief of administration, Brian D. Doyle. Then Howard.
Neither returned our calls. Go figure.
Prince Charles can relate
Plenty of local politicians are biding their time waiting for Rep. Louise M. Slaughter, D-Fairport, to retire in hopes they can grab her seat.
But it’s starting to look like it will be a long wait.
“I want to be like Alben Barkley [who died of a heart attack while giving a speech] and just pass away on the floor of the House of Representatives,” she told the Washington Post this week. “Answer a quorum call in another realm.”
Slaughter—who recently turned 80 but looks two decades younger—noted her grandmother was a descendant of Daniel Boone, who lived to the age of 86 in the early 1800s.
“I think I’m so lucky myself, to be older than dirt and no infirmities,” Slaughter added.
The interviewer must not have had any idea how old dirt is, because she then promptly asked Slaughter to name the TV show she couldn’t miss as a kid.
“There was no TV when I was a kid,” Slaughter replied.
Time travel
We admit it. We were wrong.
It turns out we weren’t cynical enough. Really.
Back in December 1999, Off Main
took note of the emerging idea to transform a stretch of the Scajaquada Expressway— from the Niagara Thruway to the Kensington Expressway—into a tree-lined parkway.
At the time, the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy and Mayor Anthony Masiello trumpeted the idea, and they asked the state Department of Transportation for help.
We cautioned how long it would take to hire consultants, secure funding, do the study and finish the designs.
“We’ll go out on a limb and predict it’ll all happen,” we said in 1999. “See you at the ribbon-cutting ceremony . . . in about 10 years.”
If only the DOT moved that quickly. This month, about 40 Parkside residents and others attended an informational meeting in St. Mary’s School for the Deaf, held as part of the DOT’s environmental study of the route.
Officials at the forum said work would begin in 2015—if the DOT decides to build the thing.
Hey, if it’s ever finished, it will offer a pleasant drive to the new Peace Bridge.
Family tradition
Election night is tough for the losing candidates, and perhaps harder still on the family members who support them.
That said, we don’t know if anyone had a rougher Election Day 2009 than Dennis Ward.
The Democratic elections commissioner for Erie County saw his wife and brother get voted out of office.
Michele Iannello, a Kenmore Democrat, lost her County Legislature seat while Dan Ward lost his race for another term on the Amherst Town Board.
An old political hand himself, Dennis said his wife and brother understand that running for office is like going to Las Vegas.
“If you can’t afford to lose, don’t go out there,” he told Off Main.
It wasn’t a complete loss for the Ward family. Dennis’ cousin, Mark, kept his seat on the Cattaraugus County Legislature.
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