We can achieve great things in 2012

Welcome back from Thanksgiving!

For those of you who got an early start on your Thanksgiving celebrations, you missed a big week at the Partnership.

Last Monday, we unveiled our 2012 Buffalo Niagara Regional Agenda with our partners from the City of Buffalo, City of Niagara Falls, Erie County, and Niagara County.  The Regional Agenda rollout event, held Monday night at Pettibone’s downtown in Coca Cola Field, was well attended by our members, the media, as well as elected leaders representing Buffalo Niagara residents at the local, county, state, and federal levels.

Our Regional Agenda began in 2001 when the then-new Senator Clinton made it clear that our region was missing out by approaching the state and federal governments for project support in a piecemeal fashion.  Buffalo Niagara, she said, needed to speak with one voice, and the Partnership began assembling local stakeholders and leaders on an annual basis to prioritize key projects.  That approach has proven successful, yielding results in 2011 like the passage of SUNY 2020, Recharge NY, the Excelsior Jobs bill, and Article X, which streamlines the regulatory process for the siting of power generation facilities.

This year, the development of our Regional Agenda was led by Nadine Powell, our Manager of Business Development, with the support of AJ Wright, our Manager of Government Affairs.  These two worked with government entities across our region to build a relatively brief, but impactful list of projects that need support. 

Being in my first year at the Partnership, this was my first opportunity to see the development of our Regional Agenda up close.  As an observer to the process, I witnessed how initiatives the Partnership pushed to include were largely legislative and policy driven, whereas the content driven by our elected leaders often involved physical development.  I also saw how Nadine and AJ narrowed large lists of priorities from each of our partners into a workable list that would represent the interests of all parties.

You can review the 2012 Buffalo Niagara Regional Agenda here.  You’ll note that this year’s agenda is topped by the revised Peace Bridge expansion and renovation project, as UB/SUNY 2020, which had led the Regional Agenda for years, is now becoming a reality.  Achieving a faster, safer, and more efficient border crossing is a huge priority and major focus for all of us.  Later today, our President & CEO, Andrew Rudnick, will join US Senator Charles Schumer, the Canadian Consulate, the Peace Bridge Authority, and the Bi-National Economic & Tourism Alliance for a press conference at the Peace Bridge as they announce new efforts to make it easier for local residents to obtain Nexus passes and cross our bridges faster.

Imagine the impact if these projects come to fruition.  We’ve started the process by getting everyone on the same page and producing a unified, cohesive document that outlines what we want to do in the coming year, and we’ll continue our work to see them through.  The beat goes on.