So I asked around, people at organizations such as Common Cause, people that would know the issue, and I asked who was the best person, the one who knew more than anyone else about this issue. The name that came back was Professor Barry Commoner who was teaching at Queens College in Brooklyn. So I called up the top man in the country on the subject, out of the blue I just called him up. Working with Common Cause, they were very active in the recycling issue, I sponsored a grant to study and draft a recycling plan for the City of Buffalo. I wrote the law concerning historic tax credits.
Buffalo is full of great old houses with historic significance.
If you take a run down house, move in and fix it up and it's in a historic district you'll not be charged the extra assessment on the improvements. In years gone by you might take pride in your house and make improvements and the City Assessor would come by and raise your assessment. Of all of the laws cited by Franczyk, the issue of housing and the dilapidated housing stock in Buffalo seem to strike closest to what would be considered a burning issue with him. These dilapidated houses have to be demolished and we have defacto urban renewal - not by policy but by neglect. So in my district the houses were literally torn to pieces by bad landlords and bad tenants.