The erstwhile and well regarded real estate attorney, David Dale, was recently elected president of the Broadway Market Board of Directors and this after an almost year long power struggle between the forces of Legislator Gregory B. Olma versus everyone else who thought Olma was, in fact, the undivided problem with the 113 year old public market. After all, in spite of getting hundreds of thousand of dollars in city subsidies, the market had plunged hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, the utilities were about to be cut off, a number of tenants were leaving, most of those remaining were paying higher rates per square foot then retailers renting prime space in the suburbs. During the same time, the board somehow found the money to spend $3000 worth of advertising to be displayed on the side of a race car in Springville, thousands more to send several board members on an all-expenses paid trip to the West coast, a hundred thousand to pave a parking lot for the benefit of a politically favored tenant/friend and several hundred thousand on studies that never actually accomplished quite anything at all. Not to mention thousands more that was just plain missing.. (www.wnypulse.com has three independent and separate audits on line that reveal a pattern of what could be most generously called "waste" and "ineptitude" at the hands of the old market board of the Broadway Market.)
Nevertheless, as is well known, facing financial collapse last year, the old board came a-begging for more money, and Buffalo Mayor Anthony Masiello, Fillmore Council member Karen Ellington, Comptroller Anthony Nanula and a host of market tenants worked to create a new board, got some money to pay immediate bills, and, frankly, ousted the intrepid and the controversial Olma.
Much has been said on both sides of the issue.
The old board has many critics, and since "success has a thousand fathers, and failure an orphan," few defenders. But the past president, and a member of the new board, Dan Glowacki, said the problem was not Olma, or the old board, but simply a lack of financial support.
"Not even Jesus and his 12 disciples can save the Broadway Market without the needed financial help from the Mayor, and that means paying the Market's utilities," Glowacki said.
Glowacki, by day, a supervisor of the County’’’’s Chestnut Ridge Park in Orchard Park was, in fact, appointed by Olma (who, although prohibited from being on the board, himself, retained the right to name one member) to the new board. Candidly speaking, the vast majority of the new board are people who are politically detached from Olma. Picked by Nanula, Ellington, Masiello, they are hardly friends of the factious-Olma. And the tenants themselves, who have had one hell of a hard time under (whether it was his fault or not) Olma‘‘s precarious rule, have all combined to turn the place from what it was: a patronage haven to what one would reasonably expect it should be, or could be: considering, after all, that it is a business establishment: to survive without (much) government subsidy, and pay their bills, like most markets do in the world- by the profits from sales to their customers. The market’’’’s new president, Mr. Dale esq., whose law offices are around the corner from the market, on Fillmore Avenue, is a man seemingly up to the task; he brings diplomacy and buys into this concept. Dale is, also, unlikely to be willing to go back to the old style patronage game of waste. Ironically Dale managed the campaign of Olma’’’’s last opponent, Ken Pokorski, who is, currently, the mayor of Sloan.
Mr. Olma responds:
"This new Board has been formed to be used as a political football, as a weapon against me. Nanula, and Karen Ellington, and Steve Pigeon have gotten together to violate the law so they could use the Market against me.
"It's not my fault if Rodney Hensel (the former Executive director) had poor management skills. They can't blame me for his failures. I'm the best friend the Market has right now. All they are doing now is coming up with one shot
revenue sources that are not going to help the Market. In the end, the community is going to be the loser and I am going to be reelected anyway.
"Greg Olma and Dave Franczyk have been the only ones who spoke up for the Market. I know for a fact that Vince LoVallo told Giambra that the City didn't want to be in the Market business anymore and maybe the Market should be moved to the waterfront. If they did that, they've have two neighborhoods ruined and two empty Markets on their hands.
"Look what they've been doing. They lost Tamar! (Tamar Rothaus, the interim Executive director, appointed after Hensel left the market) A very good manager. That wasn't my fault, it was theirs. Then they elect David Dale, my opponent's campaign manager in the last two straight elections! This is obviously all being orchestrated by Steve Pigeon and Frank Parlato but it's not going to work! It's just all part of a plan to get me. This new Board isn't going to accomplish anything but ruin the Market! They don't have any answers!"
Mr Dale responds:
His paranoia regarding his election chances and his belief that the fate of the Broadway Market effects his reelection chances is just ludicrous The right idea is that the Broadway Market is a landmark and a treasure that needs to be saved, and that is what the new board’’s agenda is: to save the market, not to attack him politically.
TWO TENANTS COMMENT:
Helen Wylubski, manager of Perison's Restaurant in the Market:
I am very optimistic about the new Board because they are listening to the tenants and seem interested in business, not politics. As far as I'm concerned, there aren't going to be anymore politics here from now on.
Jim Malczewski, a Board Member, and the owner of the Malczewski Chicken Shoppe:
I feel good about the New Board because there are more tenants on it and the new Board is listening to the tenants and going to meetings of the Tenants Association. I think the Market will survive now and we'll do fine because we are going forward on a business like basis rather than being concerned with anything else but the success of the Market. I am very encouraged.
The New Board of directors’’s officers are
President: David Dale Esq (appointed by Ellington)
Vice President: Eileen Nowak (appointed by the Broadway Area Business Association)
Secretary: Paula Alcala Rosner (appointed by Ellington)
Treasurer Mary Lewandowski (appointed by the market’’s tenant association)
it is interesting to note that two of the four major positions are Ellington appointees. Ellington as observer's know is poltically opposed to Mr Olma and so the coup is more or less complete.
