Sherry Sherrill, in a letter to the Buffalo News, October 23, 2024
During summer 2021, U.S. Senator Charles Schumer told residents of the City of Rochester that their city’s Inner Loop Highway Project would be inclusive of their input, voices, and opinions. That occurred, and seemed due, in part, to NYSDOTNYSDOT New York State Department of Transportation not being the lead agency on the Inner Loop Project. Now, Rochester’s Inner Loop Highway is being completely removed.
New York State Assemblywoman Peoples-Stokes’ criticisms of Kensington Expressway Project opposition, here in Buffalo, offers a view into what went wrong with that initiative from its outset.
When Governor Kathy Hochul widely publicized the project to our East Side Community, in January 2022, we residents were told our voices would be heard, our input respected, our opinions would matter, and we would have a say in the project’s scope and design. That didn’t happen.
Instead, the project’s goals had already been firmly decided, even before purported community stakeholder meetings held as far back as year 2009. Our East Side community’s perspective was effectively circumvented, when NYSDOT conducted that engagement. What we know of it is that a relatively small number of community groups were convened, with Peoples-Stokes, then-NYS Senator Antoine Thompson and then-Buffalo Common Council Member Demone Smith.
Those residents acquiesced to NYSDOT’s preferred plan for Route 33: a tunnel. The only authentic and robust community engagement occurred during the summer 2023 public input meetings, held at Buffalo Museum of Science. Residents clearly and overwhelmingly opposed the Kensington Expressway Project, and still do. We prefer removal. We prefer restoration.
Sherry Sherrill
Buffalo