During the Great Depression the federal government put thousands of men to work, building roads, building fields, campsites all through the CCC, the Civilian Conservation Corp. Listen to how Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz is updating that in Buffalo, NY.
Listen to Mark’s previous appearance on The Good Government Show: A Conversation with Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz (S3E03)
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Transcription
David Martin: This is the good government show.
Mark Poloncarz: Their training them for jobs that do exist in the community, whether it’s training them to be a truck driver or in this situation here, training an individual to work in parks, or for those that work in health care. I’m willing to steal the best ideas from other counties. We all understand that the Great Lakes areas are going to be climate refuges in the future, because we have the water that the southwest in the southeast doesn’t have.
If we’re doing a good job, then people don’t recognize us. They don’t. You don’t see us on TV. You don’t see us in the news. We just do the work. And our constituents who are our bosses are pleased. It’s not always the same thing that keeps me up at night, but I get a lot of things I do.
David Martin: It was the new deal. The idea was to dig out of the Great Depression with relief programs that use government funds for sweeping projects to invest money into the American economy and put people to work. One of those programs was to seek the Civilian Conservation Corps. That idea is being resurrected and refined in Buffalo, New York. Welcome to the Good Government show.
I’m Dave Martin first. Help us share the message of good government by liking us and sharing us on your favorite social media reviews right here where you’re listening, and join our good Government Show community. Check out our website for the link. Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz is joining me again. I had Mark on his show back in April of 2023.
If you didn’t listen, go back and listen to that episode after this episode. Buffalo had been through some tough times. First, it was a mass shooting incident and about six months later they had a deadly blizzard that crippled the city. On that episode, county executive Poloncarz gave a masterclass in crisis management. It’s a great look at how a city leader deals with challenges, and there’s a link in our show notes.
This episode, we have some good news coming out of Erie County. The National Association of Counties honored Erie for a program called Workforce Buffalo Erie Core. Basically, the county provides training for young men and women to become full time Parks Department employees. It teaches job skills and how to work. Listen to what he says about using a chainsaw.
What are the benefits of the good? Government shows we can share great ideas best practices with government leaders across the nation. And Markham tell you, if it works in his county, it could work in other cities and other counties. And as you want to know more. He’s happy to take your call. Coming up, County executive Mark Poloncarz back.
Let the good government show. Talking about, he revived a 1930s program for today.
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That’s good news for lefties. Listen, we’re listening now. I’m happy to have back with me. Mark Poloncarz, who is the county executive from Erie County, New York, Buffalo, New York. Welcome back.
Mark Poloncarz: Glad to be I’m glad to be back, David.
David Martin: I’m glad to have you back. And the reason why I’m having you back is because you are about to win a major award here at the National Association of Counties. You are picking up an award for something called workforce Buffalo, Erie core. Which, you know, the brief blurb I read about this. It’s modeled after President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps or Sikh Corps.
I’m familiar with it. Many people probably aren’t. Could you explain what the Sikh was and what this is all about at the Erie core?
Mark Poloncarz: Well, Sikh was a program that was part of the, massive attempt by the Franklin Roosevelt administration to deal with the great Depression by taking and basically bringing, unemployed into men, primarily from the cities and taking them out into the rural areas to work on projects in parks, creation of national parks. A lot of the national parks we get to enjoy today were in many ways built by members of the Sikh.
They were paid a, a wage, portion of that wage was sent back to their families so they could not spend it, which for young men, they can spend money pretty quickly. But the idea was put them to work, get money back into the economy, and it survived for about ten years. Part of our Erie County park system was was built with, KCC members back in the 1930s.
David Martin: So we were they they did other things, like they build like huts on the Appalachian Trail. They built parkland. They built, you know, the WPA Works Progress Administration build bridges and roads. And you’re reviving this in Buffalo?
Mark Poloncarz: Well, we revived it from a standpoint of, our parks department and other parks departments were seeing a difficult time of hiring people who had skills that were necessary to, going in and working in a parks field. And so what we did is we said, well, you know, we we have training dollars that are available will take, unemployed individuals primarily from the urban area, and we’ll give them the, the skills that they need to actually succeed in a job in our parks forever.
And I’ll give a good example of it. We have people who would apply for jobs, and then they’d be said, hey, you got to go cut some trees down. Here’s go grab a chainsaw and do it. And they’re like, what’s a chainsaw? How do I even start a chainsaw?
David Martin: So there was it was that basic for some folks?
Mark Poloncarz: Oh, God yes. If you live in the city and you’re in urban environment, you may never have. You wouldn’t know the difference between a bo saw and a chainsaw. Nevertheless, how to drive a bobcat? So what we found out is there are certain skill sets that we need to train individuals. So they. Through the Erie Job Corps program, we are training them in skill sets that they could use, not just in parks, but in public works projects and things like that.
And what we’re finding out is the vast majority of these individuals not only go into the field, but they succeed because they know what they’re getting themselves into. They have the skill set necessary to then succeed in a position where if we train them beforehand and we pay for their training because you when you have an employee, especially in an area where it’s more of a blue collar job, you don’t want to have to necessarily.
And for the first six weeks of their job, training them in just the most basic skills possible. And what we’re finding out is that’s what we were doing with some of our employees now with Job Corps. We are getting individuals who have the training before and the the.
David Martin: Is it as simple as where work boots bring your lunch.
Mark Poloncarz: Oh yeah it is. It’s also how to communicate with individuals. Okay. If you’re in a parks farm and you’re inevitably going to run into some of our parks users. Yes. And you’ve got to be able to communicate with them and have them understand that if they ask you where the nearest bathroom is, okay, this person is not an annoyance.
I need to answer this question and show them the nearest bathroom is half mile down the road to the left. And for a lot of folks, the communication skills was always a big problem. And then also having them understand that if they have a job, and it requires them to be at work at 7:00 in the morning, they have to be at work at 7:00 in the morning.
And for a lot of folks, they’re especially in some they’re like, well, I’ll come in when I want. No, that doesn’t work. If you have to open the gates to a park at 630 or 7:00 in the morning, you can’t just show up at nine and have people waiting outside. So it was it was the communication job skills, things that we take for granted, especially if you’ve you’ve been out in the field for a long time.
But when you find out with younger folks, it’s an issue because they’ve never had the training, they may never have had a a real job before. And I think it’s important to realize that what we’re seeing, we’re already into the the third or fourth cohort. And every one of them who wants a job is getting hired either for Erie County, New York state parks, Buffalo City parks, some of our town parks, some of them are not maybe going to the parks or going on public works departments, but they have skills so that when they get on that job, they succeed right away.
David Martin: It can be challenging to get people to, agree to work outdoors. How are you dealing with that change?
Mark Poloncarz: It really depends on the person. There are some folks who do not want to work indoors. They want to work with their hands outdoors. Yeah. There are others that would would just as soon never be in an environment unless is air conditioned during the summer and heated during the, during the winter, which is not a parks job because.
David Martin: That is not a person.
Mark Poloncarz: You can get pretty cold during the winter and pretty hot during the summer. So it really, I think part of it is just having individuals know what they’re getting into before they actually start the job. One thing that really bothers me is you. You hire someone, you spend some time training him, and then they quit in six months because they just dislike what they’re doing.
David Martin: Oh, I didn’t know I had to be outside every day.
Mark Poloncarz: Yeah, I and I didn’t realize I was going to have to deal with the public, or I didn’t realize I. I would have to deal with a boss who told me to do this. I just thought I could drive a truck around. No. So it’s very important that people understand what they’re getting into, because we don’t want to have to train someone, spend a lot of money training someone, and then do it all over again.
So the training part is actually being paid for by federal. We owe it dollars to our Buffalo and Erie County Workforce Investment Board. And so the nice thing is, is we’re training individuals using federal dollars for programs that they’re going to get hired if they want. And we’re finding a lot of success. And and the first cohorts have been hired and we’re very pleased with them.
And they seem pretty happy with the jobs.
David Martin: Are you confident the federal dollars will remain in place?
Mark Poloncarz: We oh, dollars right now are staying in place. I’m hopeful that when we are there needs to be renewed, which is in about two years. It will the advantages. This is a job training program through the federal government. That affects all communities. It’s not just an urban or or blue state areas. Blue county areas. We always go across the whole country.
So I for them to cut that, would be in some ways cutting their nose off in spite of themselves because this is, this is a very effective way to train individuals for jobs that exist in communities. That’s the key. With we our dollars, they’re not training them for jobs that don’t exist, or you can’t get hired in there training them for jobs that do exist in the community, whether it’s training them to be a truck driver or in this situation here, training an individual to work in parks or for those that work in health care.
David Martin: You said you’ve had two cohorts so far. Tell me, what are the jobs that these people have gotten, as a result of the of the the program?
Mark Poloncarz: Well, some of them have gone right into our Erie County Parks Department, so they’ll be working on all kinds of projects in the parks from in the winter, basically plowing snow and making certain that our, our facilities are, are up and running, which also.
David Martin: Having snow in Erie. Now that’s a that’s a big that’s a big job.
Mark Poloncarz: But we also have skills. We also have cross-country skis, ski skiing areas. We of course have ice rinks outdoors. So they learn basic skills on how to do that. And then in the summer it’s just maintaining the parks, maintaining park shelters, maintaining facilities, making certain that people understand that the parks are theirs. And we want them to be kept in as good a shape as possible.
And, the nice thing is, it’s with these jobs and what we’re hearing from the folks who are taking them is it’s it’s not a job where they just do the same thing over and over. And every day is different. Every day they’re going to get assigned different tasks, different responsibilities. Could be repairing a trail, one day.
The next day, they could be cleaning our brush. The following day it could be, just, ensuring that our bike trails are clear of debris. So I like the idea of someone who wants to work outside. Hands on. I think this is an opportunity for them to get training, and we see it because it’s been successful.
And I’m very pleased to have been honored by Naco through our county, on the, Best in Class award. But it just goes to show that you can take an old idea, because that’s really what it was. It was taking the old idea. The Civilian Conservation Corps and kind of updating it for today. And, it still works.
David Martin: Whose idea was this?
Mark Poloncarz: It was mine.
David Martin: Oh, this is all yours.
Mark Poloncarz: I’m an FDR guy. I love FDR, and we had and we were having problems with our parks. We were hiring people and they were quitting.
David Martin: How did you come up with the idea? Where did it come from?
Mark Poloncarz: Actually, it was kind of a conversation with our parks commissioner and as well as, the folks from our workforce development and that we were hiring people and they were quitting, you know, and we also had a problem where 20% of my county are people of color. But in our parks department, it was only like 2 or 3% because we were not drawing from a pool.
And individuals that had the understanding of how to succeed. And these jobs. So by saying, okay, we can use we owe a dollars to fund this program, and we can go after at risk unemployed individuals, including youth, we can train them. They can live in the city. We can train them in the city. We can we can take them out to the parks as part of the training.
They understand what it’s like to be in these parks. Some of them have never been in a non urban park. Okay, that was one of the most interesting things. Is Chestnut Ridge Park in Erie County is our crown jewel. It’s 1200 plus acres. It’s one of the largest county parks in America. And I think of it as like sometimes a second home.
I’m there so often a good. But if you live in the city of Buffalo and you don’t have a car, you may never have set foot there. It’s got one of the biggest sledding hills in all of New York. And what we found out is a lot of folks are like, wow, I, I thought the park was what is in the city of Buffalo, which are nice parks, but they’re smaller.
David Martin: Baseball fields.
Mark Poloncarz: Soccer fields, some running areas, and that’s it. It’s not like there’s acres and acres of undisturbed land with hiking trails. So what we found out is this is a great opportunity to bring individuals, underprivileged, may not have a job, people of color into our park system, and they love it. They really they love the opportunity. And it’s been it’s been a success.
David Martin: And working for the parks department is kind of a fun job, isn’t it?
Mark Poloncarz: It seems to be the my, my staff jokes that when I leave this office, I’m going to get a job as a park ranger because I love being in the park so much. Okay, well, just a couple days ago, we were doing, kind of.
David Martin: A step up for county executive.
Mark Poloncarz: Yeah. Some ways, a lot of people would think it’s a step up. But a couple days ago, we were, one of our beaches around Lake Erie. We have a beautiful beach, been a beach, and we have a new program in which the public can help participate in cleaning up the beach, called a beach bucket. You can pick up a bucket as you walk in, pick up debris and the beach that’s left behind.
And we did that. We did our press event, and then we all looked around and everyone said, no one wants to leave and go back downtown to the office. This is a beautiful beach right on Lake Erie. Nice wind blowing and and the parks workers get to enjoy that every day while we joke. I go back in and I’m in the ivory tower of our building where county government functions, and I if I had my choice, I’d rather be at the beach.
David Martin: Me too. Why do you think that? You know, this key idea or the idea why hasn’t had been revived on a larger scale?
Mark Poloncarz: I don’t know why. Because it makes total sense. And one of the things I talk about with my team is, I’m willing to steal the best ideas from other counties. I’m willing to steal past.
David Martin: Administrations.
Mark Poloncarz: And past administrations like we have live well, ery well for our health and human services. Well, that came from live well, San Diego. So why reinvent the wheel? Yeah, the wheel works, and this is a perfect example of it with regards to the old programs for the SEC. Yeah. We’re not housing them in Wood Lodge cabins like they did in the CC, but we’re giving them the same.
David Martin: Did you go back in and read about the CC camps?
Mark Poloncarz: And I knew a little bit about it. We actually had a CC camp at Chestnut Ridge Park. Okay. The old lodge that, that they built is there, but the the camps where they lived are long gone. But I am aware of it and the impact it had. And I look at it and I say that was nearly 100 years ago now because we’re talking about the 1930s and that legacy is still here and we’re still enjoying it.
Right. It’s one of the things I love about parks is you can invest in them today and know that the investments you make today are going to be enjoyed by people 50, 70, 80 years from now. And but it doesn’t make sense in my eyes. Why you don’t see other counties and other governments kind of replicating the program.
Because if you have a program that work in the past and we’re showing that is working today, it’s a good one, why shouldn’t why don’t others do it now?
David Martin: So can people call you up and say, hey, Mark, tell me what’s going on and how I can do this? And I get.
Mark Poloncarz: A hold of me and Erie County government and that’s Erie County, New York. Yes. Three Erie counties, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania. This is New York in Buffalo. And we’d be glad, we’ve done that with other programs that we’ve created that have been successful and others have replicated them. And if there are other programs that are successful elsewhere and we’re not doing that, I always like to find out about them so that we can replicate them.
David Martin: I want to ask you about a couple of other things. We were just both briefly at the Great Lakes, County Forum here at the National Association of Counties. How is the condition of the Great Lakes, and what are we doing there to keep the keep the water clean?
Mark Poloncarz: Well, the Great Lakes are better than they certainly were in the 1960s and 70s. They’re still at risk. We are concerned especially and when it comes to Lake Erie about algae blooms. Yep. We they’re, you’re seeing, they call hab harmful algae blooms on the Western part of the lake that have had real impacts out there near Toledo and Put-In-Bay, Ohio and so forth.
It hasn’t get risen to the level and like that on the eastern part of the lakes. But our greatest asset is our lake. It’s the fresh water. We all understand that the Great Lakes areas are going to be climate refuges in the future, because we have the water that the southwest in the southeast doesn’t have, but we have to have clean water.
Yep. So one of the things that.
David Martin: We have to work together.
Mark Poloncarz: Correct. This is not the state lines. The international lines don’t matter. Yes. The U.S. and Canadians and there’s Canadians here, and we work with them on a number of issues associated with the cleanliness of the lake. That has to continue. So one of the biggest projects we have in Erie County is, is a sewage treatment facility that we’re updating that was built in the 1970s that has basically it’s it’s having a about a half $1 billion update over a ten year period.
And the reason being is if we don’t do that, then we have sewer discharges going into Lake Erie, which is not a good thing. No. And everyone needs to do that because we have to have a clean lake. So, the Great Lakes are a huge asset for all of our communities, and other areas of the country would die to have as much fresh water as we have, but we have to keep it clean.
So that’s why we all have to do investments and we need to work together. The issue with the how the harmful algae blooms comes from agricultural runoff in the Midwest, runoff on the Miami River in Indiana can have a negative impact to areas on the Great Lakes, such as Toledo and Cleveland, and hasn’t reached Buffalo yet. But we’re worried that it could.
So we have to work together to address those.
David Martin: Are you seeing any change in the number of tourists that come to Buffalo from Canada?
Mark Poloncarz: Oh, yeah, I dropped tremendously there.
David Martin: How does that affect Buffalo?
Mark Poloncarz: It has an impact. Our county is in pretty good shape right now, but our hotel taxes are down. Our sales tax in the area of, recreation is down. And we know it’s primarily because of the Canadians who are not coming over after President Trump attacked them, tried to say that he was going to make them the 51st state.
I mean, Canada is a proud country. Their citizens are proud and they’re angry and they’re not coming over like they were. We know border traffic on our area bridges is down 25 to 30%, and it’s not truck traffic that’s down. The truck traffic’s the same. This is these are all cars of individuals who would have come in the United States for day trips, for more vacations that are not coming here anymore because they’re angry to go.
David Martin: To the Finger Lakes Wine District, to go swimming in Canada, go to, to catch a Syracuse game.
Mark Poloncarz: Yeah.
David Martin: Get your bills, get your.
Mark Poloncarz: Bills game tied. Go to our museums. Our our our our.
David Martin: Our follow the Toronto Maple Leafs to a sabers.
Mark Poloncarz: Game. Yeah. And there was there was a story about how, though was the worst showing of Canadian, Maple Leafs fans at the last sabers game we had in April because they just refused to come over, and they usually come over in droves because they can buy tickets for less expensive they do in Toronto. O our AKG Art museum is very big, well known art museum, especially on modern and contemporary art.
They’ve, they’ve seen a tremendous drop in Canadians. And when they come over, they usually spend a lot of money. They’re not coming over for a day. They may come over for a weekend, or just a couple days, but when they come, they’ll go to the art museum. They’ll stay in a nice hotel, they’ll go to a couple restaurants.
Sure. They’ll stop at some of our stores and pick up trinkets and things like that. Or maybe not trinkets if they’re going to a jeweler. And it was tough. Is it’s a double edged sword. They’re angry because of the the Trump statements on Canada and the tariffs. And the Canadian dollar’s worth a lot less than it once was.
So they’re staying home to bad. Yeah it hurts but we’re we’re getting through it.
David Martin: I hope someone hears you. The last time we were on the show, you had had, two crises that most county executives, one of them don’t have to live through. And you had to. There was a massive shooting scene, a shooting incident. And then a few months later, you had, deadly snowfall, like, emergency, snow emergency that cropped up, basically over, I think, if I recall correctly, about 12 hours, several feet of snow over 12 hours.
Mark Poloncarz: Yeah, I was it was the snow, plus the winds, and the extreme cold. We we lost over 40 people over a three day period. It was a terrible snowstorm. I feel for the folks in Texas, my county colleagues in Texas. I know they’re taking a lot of heat, because sometimes Mother Nature just does things that you can’t you can’t handle.
And in Buffalo, we know how to handle snow. But when it’s when you’re having 70 mile an hour winds which are actually shredding the snowflakes, that’s what the weather service determined how the wind was blowing. So hard it was shredding snowflakes. You have whiteout conditions. You can’t see where you’re going. Roads are getting backed up. People are stuck on roads.
And the other part that was very dangerous with this was, we didn’t lose as many people, like, on the roads, in cars. We lost people at home because we lost a substantial amount of the, community lost power for three days. And we had extreme cold, like, zero degree temperatures with -30 degree wind chills. And we lost, quite a number of seniors who died in their home because we couldn’t get to them because the conditions were so bad and they literally froze to death.
David Martin: What have you changed as a result of what you learned from that snowstorm?
Mark Poloncarz: Well, number one, we’ve worked with the utility companies for them to harden their substations. They actually had substations that basically froze the way substations work is there. They’re they’re pretty much open air. But the key, as you use the air to come in and help cool the substation, because the amount of heat that’s created, in the process.
David Martin: So we’ve learned all about substations.
Mark Poloncarz: Electrical substations. And they, they realize they have to put not just temporary but permanent. They had to build permanent structures around their substations, which would allow them to close the substation from the open air process. So normally they’re open air. Even in the winter, they’ll be primarily open air. But if they see that there’s a problem, a very bad storm with extreme cold temperatures and winds coming, they now have the ability to close those entry points, which will prevent the substations from freezing.
That’s why we lost power. It wasn’t because trees down, they took down power lines. It’s the substations froze, which no one had ever thought of was going to be a problem. Yeah. So we worked with them and then for ourselves, we bought some more equipment that allows us to go in the worst conditions. We had Arctic cats, so to speak.
The tracked vehicles, right, could have a couple people in them. We use them in our parks for grooming trails and things like that. Well, we decided we need to have bigger ones, so we bought some that have the capacity of holding 15 people at a time, and they have the ability to traverse ground that a vehicle cannot. So if we needed to go to a particular part of the city of Buffalo, we can take the Arctic cat out.
And and even in the worst conditions, it’s going to get where it needs to go.
David Martin: And as a result of the shooting, which I know that that was a, you know, a horrible process and, and, and a long healing process. Any lessons you took away from that, that, that you can help in the future?
Mark Poloncarz: Well, I would never wish that out of any, any community, even my worst enemy, so to speak. Right. It was just it was horrible. The one thing that we we were able to do, unlike some others, is we avoided the protests and so forth by basically just getting everyone together and saying, listen, this is a horrible incident.
We had somebody from outside our area, white supremacist, come to kill as many African-Americans as he could. He killed ten. What you need to do is just immediately come together and address the needs. There was the shock of the shooting. There was the immediate response where it happened at a supermarket, which is the only major supermarket in that community.
We needed to provide fresh food for the people who live there. And the mental health concerns, which still continue. We’ve we’ve never stopped providing mental health counseling to those who need it. But we also learned that if it’s a primarily African-American neighborhood, you need to have, mental health counselors that look like the people in the neighborhood, because if they’re all if all white counselors, maybe the individual doesn’t feel as comfortable after a white supremacist came in the community.
David Martin: Yeah, I can see that.
Mark Poloncarz: So we’ve made recommendations to other communities that unfortunately have have dealt with mass shootings. It’s it’s just a horrible thing that you don’t want to be a member of that club. We’re a member of that club permanently. And sadly, more and more communities become members of those clubs. We we’re still dealing with the mental health concerns. The supermarkets back open, they’re building a memorial to the individuals who were slain.
But we’re still going to, as we realized.
David Martin: Do you make an effort to get out of that market yourself?
Mark Poloncarz: Well, yeah, because it’s actually fairly close to my house. Okay. It’s the closest major supermarket to where I live. All right.
David Martin: You do you go to the supermarket yourself?
Mark Poloncarz: I do groceries, I’ll. I’ll pick up groceries there in the evening. Especially here. I know the area. Well, I know some of the the employees there.
David Martin: How long does it take you to get through the supermarket?
Mark Poloncarz: Oh, not that much more than I could be anywhere else.
David Martin: Oh, Mr. Executive, yeah, thanks. You’re here.
Mark Poloncarz: Well, I get that I, I do, I get that at any supermarket. Okay. But if anything, I usually get more of, especially from the staff. We appreciate you coming. Not just once. Okay. Doing an event, never showing your face again. You actually shop at our store, and I go, yeah, it’s, it’s about a mile and a quarter from my house, and it’s real easy to get to by car, for me and, I and that’s the thing that happened.
It was it was in an African-American neighborhood, but it’s a neighborhood that it that supermarket, provides services for a much larger group.
David Martin: Neighbors like yourself. Yeah.
Mark Poloncarz: And. Okay. And so it was it was important that it reopened. There was some people didn’t want it to reopen because they didn’t want to have to think about ever setting foot in. Some folks have never set foot back in the place again. Understand? Understand that. Yeah. That’s why we also have to ensure that we have other options available.
Okay. And if they still need mental health assistance, we provide it to them.
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Dot org slash podcasts. So, we we’ve gone over some of these things, but, I, I urge people to listen to your first show and compare answers. Here you are. Since, three years since we last talked, has your definition of good government changed? What is good government?
Mark Poloncarz: Well, I look at it. I tell my staff this if we’re doing a good job, then people don’t recognize us. They don’t. We don’t see us on TV. You don’t see us in the news. We just do the work. And, our constituents who are bosses are pleased. Okay? It’s when things go haywire in governments, whether there’s financial crisis or you hear of corruption and stuff like that.
Yes, that certainly isn’t good government. But I look at it as if you’re working very hard on behalf of the public. And people just just are appreciate that government works for them and there’s no problems. And I assume that’s good government.
David Martin: How can people make an impact on government?
Mark Poloncarz: They use their voice and what often happens is people say, I’m just one person, I can’t have an impact. And they can, we the example is the the beach pockets we just announced a couple days ago, one person reached out to us and said, hey, I saw this in the South, and they leave these buckets out for people to pick up when they go to the beach to pick up garbage, and then they toss the garbage, the garbage in the in the garbage bins, and then they put the bucket back.
And that one person we talked about and said, yeah, it’s a pretty good idea. Let’s see if we can get this going with other parks and beaches. That one person made a difference. That program exists now because of that one person. So I think you have to use your voice. You have to understand that not every issue is going to get resolved the way you want.
No and no. We’re going make.
David Martin: Everyone happy.
Mark Poloncarz: And you can make everyone happy. And there are some perpetual complainers who will always complain about, no matter what. It is everything. But you can have an impact, and one person can, even in a fairly large government. And I remind people when it comes to Erie County, we represent about a million people. I’m county executive of a community that is a greater population than less than five states.
And we don’t get two senators. We got we got a couple congressmen, but, we actually provide the same services and in things in those states. So if you can make a difference in a government as large as mine in one person, you can certainly do it elsewhere.
David Martin: You had a career before you became a county executive’s going to county executive for a long time. What got you into this and what keeps you in the office?
Mark Poloncarz: Well, before I entered county government, I practiced law. And then I ran for the office of county comptroller in 2005, which is the chief financial officer of the county. In our county, it’s an elected position. Like the treasurer, I ran because I realized I could make a much is an attorney. I was making a difference in my client’s lives, but if I wanted to make a big difference in the community, I wasn’t going to do it as an attorney, and I wanted to make a bigger difference in my community.
So I ran as comptroller during the height of a fiscal crisis when when Erie County’s finances were run poorly, I got elected. And then in 2011, I felt I could do a better job and leave a better lasting legacy than my predecessor. And I ran and the people gave me an opportunity to serve, and and I’ve been there since.
But you actually do if you do the job right in some of these positions, you can leave a lasting legacy in your community. And I’d like to think I did. Others will judge me on that, but it’s it’s a lot more than I could have as an attorney.
David Martin: 12 years, 13 years as county executive.
Mark Poloncarz: Well, this is the middle of my 14th year.
David Martin: 14th year. What would you like people to know about government now that you’ve been there for this long?
Mark Poloncarz: Government is like anything, including in the private sector. It can be run exceptionally well. It can be run exceptionally poorly. It really depends on the team you have around you. A lot of people say you do a good job in county government and I say, well, that’s because they have a great team and you have to surround yourself with good people and you surround yourself with poor people.
You’ll you’ll have bad government. You’ll make mistakes. I think government in the end, is just trying to serve its bosses, which are the people. And we do react to what the people say because we have to. We’re elected officials and if things can be done better, then we need to do it better. I think people have a misunderstanding of government that it’s a super bloated waste, fraud and abuse.
It’s not. It’s not we. I was elected as a comptroller to go after waste, fraud and abuse. And and there’s some there is always stuff that you can chip away at, but it’s it’s not this bloated entity. Most governments in some ways are running on shoestring budgets to, to for the services they really have to provide. They may be big budgets, but it’s never enough.
I just think people need to understand that the people in public service are working very hard to try to deliver needed services to communities as efficiently as possible, and sometimes they get a lot of, a lot of grief, that for things that are completely out of their control or with the assumptions that people have that are wrong.
David Martin: What’s the best part of your job?
Mark Poloncarz: Oh, it’s having an opportunity to make a difference in people’s lives. Long term legacy. I just had somebody come up to me and congratulated me for, a program that we did that they loved, and I. And I was like, oh, I appreciate that. And I’m glad to hear that, because you don’t often get that. We often hear too much from the complainer.
But when you have somebody come up and say, I really appreciate what you do with that park, I really appreciate we we created a, an app for phones called Erie Path to help, people who are having mental health issues and the person told me, I said, you know, I didn’t know where to turn. And I saw the ad for it.
I went online and I got everything I needed on my app. I didn’t have to feel uncomfortable talking to someone.
David Martin: Oh, that’s good.
Mark Poloncarz: So it was these things like that that that’s rewarding.
David Martin: What keeps you up at night?
Mark Poloncarz: Oh, everything. Budgets, issues associated with emergencies. It’s there’s a there’s a lot that keeps you up at night when you when you’re working in government, especially in my position where I’ve got 35 department heads under me from everything from mental health to parks to libraries, social services, emergency services, fire safety. It’s not always the same thing that keeps me up at night, but I get a lot of things I do.
David Martin: Okay, well, this is the the next question I usually ask everyone is what’s your favorite local dish? We’ve talked about Buffalo wings. Tell me something about buffalo that people don’t know.
Mark Poloncarz: Well, first off, everyone thinks it’s this frozen tundra wonderland winter wonderland, which it’s not. We get some bad storms during the winter, but most of the time we don’t use parts of Buffalo. They almost have never any snow. I’m a cross-country skier, and I’ve had cross-country skiing the last couple of years because we just haven’t had a lot of snow, except for an occasional big storm, right?
I think the other thing, too, is when people think of Buffalo, New York, and they here in New York, they get that all New York City mentality, where we’re more like Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Detroit. Okay, we’re 1.5 hours from Toronto. We’re by driving, we’re six and a half to seven hours from New York City. Yes. And we’re three hours from Cleveland.
Pittsburgh and Detroit. So it’s much more a midwestern city. And it’s a city with great restaurants, a lot of mom and pop shops, not chain restaurants. Has great arts and culture. It was one of the top ten population size cities in the beginning of the 20th century. It’s not anymore. It’s about 50th, but we still have all the arts and cultural institutions we did back then.
And as a result, we have this incredible, collection of our collection of institutions like our Philharmonic. And, thankfully, we’re not losing that.
David Martin: When’s the last time you had Buffalo wings rally?
Mark Poloncarz: A couple of weeks ago. Okay. It was a combination. Buffalo wings. Chicken wings. As we call them. Back in Buffalo. And beef on weck, which is, roast beef, shaved very thin on a Kimmel like roll, which is an all German roll, all right, which is caraway seeds and salt on the top. Put a little horseradish on.
That’s it. Tasty. If you go to Buffalo and you go to a lot of restaurants, you’ll see a special, beef on weck and wings. Get that? Just like the wings. Get the beef on wagon wings.
David Martin: Well, we’re here in southern Delphia. How does it compare to a Philly cheesesteak? It’s different. Okay.
Mark Poloncarz: Yeah, it’s a different sandwich. All right. Okay, so I love Philly cheesesteaks, but it’s it’s a different it’s a different meat versus the beef. And the beef on whack is a really high quality prime cut of the beef. Not to say our friends in Philly don’t have prime beef. It’s a little different.
David Martin: Okay. All right, I’ll let you get away with that. This is the good government show. We always bring it back to good government. Give me an example of some good government projects you’re excited about in Butler.
Mark Poloncarz: Well, I think one that we’ve been working on is, is trying to, create a more efficient transit system and making certain that street lights and stoplights are coordinated so people can get through quicker, which has a dual purpose and not only makes transportation faster, but it also has a better effect on our environment because cars idle when they’re at stoplights.
We’re working on that kind of a project, also in conjunction with bike lanes. We’re focusing.
David Martin: Good. I like.
Mark Poloncarz: Bike lanes. Yeah, bike lanes are important. It’s not always easy. And some of the older communities that have smaller streets, to have two lanes of traffic and two bike lanes, but we’re we’re working on that. We’re also, trying to, create a more regionalized system with regards to our, planning. Unfortunately, in New York, they have what’s called a home rule, which allows the lowest level of government to to provide the service that they want.
As a result, we we kind of have a lot of smaller municipalities that have a separate planning department. So we want to kind of regionalize that so we can have more efficient, planning. And as it comes to, moving forward, that’s just one of many things we’re working on.
David Martin: It all sounds like good government.
Mark Poloncarz: I would like to think so.
David Martin: Well, once again, a pleasure, catching up with you and talking with you again. Mark is the county executive from Erie County. And congratulations on your NATO workforce. Buffalo Erie core, award.
Mark Poloncarz: Congratulations, I appreciate it.
David Martin: Thank you. And thanks for coming on again. Good to catch up. It was.
Mark Poloncarz: My pleasure.
David Martin: You want to hear more about good government, check out another show I host leading Iowa good Government in Iowa cities. I host the show with Brad Cavanaugh, mayor of Dubuque, Iowa, and the immediate past president of the Iowa League of Cities. Together, we talk to leaders in Iowa cities. We talk about what works and what good government looks like in Iowa.
Join us right here. We listening now that’s leading Iowa. Good government in Iowa. Cities.
It’s an old idea and we updated it for today. That’s how Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz described his quote new program unquote. It’s called workforce Buffalo Erie Core. One of the great stories we hear on the Good Government show is how great ideas come from somebody else. In this case, the county executive in Buffalo thought about how an old program from the days of FDR could work today.
A little modernization, and it’s a new good government program, and that’s good government. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Just tweak it a little bit for today. Mark Poloncarz did that. You want to know more? Give him a call and good luck to his future as a park ranger. But not just yet. He’s still a county executive.
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**This transcription was created using digital tools and has not been edited by a live person. We apologize for any discrepancies or errors.