A Region Ready to Rise
Buffalo built America once. In 1825 the Erie Canal made this city its western terminus, and within a generation Buffalo was the greatest grain port in the world, the place where a local inventor and engineer created the steam-powered grain elevator, and the host of the 1901 Pan-American Exposition, lit by the hydropower of the Niagara River. By 1950 Buffalo was the fifteenth-largest city in the United States, home to 580,132 people.
Then the ground shifted. The St. Lawrence Seaway opened in 1959 and ships sailed past us. Mills downsized and closed; Bethlehem Steel shut its Lackawanna plant in 1983, and the region lost at least 70,000 jobs between 1970 and 1984. Highways were cut through Olmsted parkways and neighborhoods. For sixty years, every census counted fewer Buffalonians than the last.
The 2020 census broke that streak. For the first time in seventy years, Buffalo grew: up 6.5 percent to 278,349 residents. Canalside now draws more than 1.5 million visitors a year. Old warehouses, grain silos and office towers are coming back to life. The turnaround has started. The work now is to make it last, spread it to every neighborhood, and turn a recovery into a boom.
Why Leadership Is the Missing Ingredient
Western New York does not lack assets. We have fresh water, an international border, world-class architecture, what is widely regarded as the nation’s oldest park and parkway system, a SUNY flagship university and a growing medical campus. What we have lacked is a shared plan, and the leadership to carry it out.
Our governance is split into pieces. Erie County alone has 3 cities, 25 towns and 16 villages, 44 municipalities in all, each with its own budgets, codes and politics. Economic development is spread across a countywide industrial development agency and separate town agencies. Big decisions about our highways and waterfront are often made in Albany. In late 2025 the state’s own transportation commissioner acknowledged that plans for the Skyway, the Scajaquada and the Kensington Expressway never got a shovel in the ground, mostly because there was no consensus on how to do them.
That is the leadership void. Change Buffalo PAC exists to fill it, with a clear, comprehensive agenda and the civic coalition to push it forward.
Our Principles
- Pro-growth. A growing region can afford good services and low taxes at the same time. A shrinking one can afford neither. Every policy should make it easier to build, hire, invest and stay.
- Pro-market. Government should set fair rules, invest in shared infrastructure, and then get out of the way. Open, competitive processes beat backroom deals and one-off subsidies.
- Low-tax and fiscally disciplined. Western New Yorkers pay a lot and should get more for it. We will push to lower the overall burden through consolidation, efficiency and growth, not gimmicks.
- Pro-neighborhood. Buffalo is a city of neighborhoods. Growth should strengthen them: fix what is broken, fill vacant lots, and respect local character.
- Pro-democracy and citizen-empowering. People who live with decisions should help make them, through competitive elections, open data, neighborhood councils and participatory budgeting.
- Pro-participatory planning. Big projects succeed when communities shape them from the start. Plans made with residents get built. Plans handed down do not.
The Agenda at Three Levels
Our region’s problems cross municipal lines, and so do our solutions. The Turnaround Agenda is organized by the level of government that can act:
City of Buffalo: A City That Builds
Legalize more housing, make permits fast and predictable, cut red tape for small businesses, put vacant land back to work, keep the city budget disciplined, and give neighborhoods real power over local priorities.
Erie and Niagara Counties: Leaner, Fairer, Faster
Consolidate overlapping services and agencies, reform and unify the IDAs, give property and sales taxpayers relief, speed up land bank redevelopment, and invest in workforce skills that match real jobs.
Buffalo-Niagara: One Region, One Economy
Market Western New York to the world as one economy, build regional transit and cross-border trade, reclaim the waterfront from Lake Erie to the Niagara River, and keep the talent we train.
Citizen Power: Democracy, Participation and Transparency
Open up ballot access, align elections to increase turnout, explore ranked-choice voting, publish government data by default, and build participatory budgeting and neighborhood councils into how decisions get made.
How the Pieces Fit Together
The Turnaround Agenda is the framework. It ties together the PAC’s detailed policy plans on Global Economic Prowess, Urban Design, Public Space, Architecture and Housing, Environment, Conservation and Recreation, Reimagined Tax Systems, Municipalities and Efficient Service Delivery and the Transformation of Public Education, along with our place-based development projects from the Outer Harbor to Humboldt Parkway.
Together they make one argument: Buffalo Niagara’s decline was not destiny, and its comeback is not an accident. Both are the result of choices. With a clear agenda and leaders willing to act, this region can choose growth.
Be Part of the Turnaround
Ideas only matter when people carry them forward. Join a working group, support the PAC, or get in touch. The next chapter of Buffalo’s story is being written now. Help us write it.
The proposals on these pages are Change Buffalo PAC’s policy positions and recommendations. Factual background is drawn from public sources, including the U.S. Census Bureau, New York State, Erie County and local news reporting.
