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Home > Leadership > Mayor > Archive Press Releases > 2009 Archives > June 2009 > Mayor Brown Hails Federal UASI Funding For Buffalo/Region

Mayor Brown Hails Federal UASI Funding For Buffalo/Region

Contact: Peter K. Cutler
              851-4841

Mayor Brown Cites Strong City Effort for Homeland Security Funding in 2009; Praises Support of Federal Delegation

Mayor Byron W. Brown today hailed news that the City of Buffalo and the region will receive $5,544,750 for the Buffalo Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) Program. City representatives from the Buffalo Police Department, Buffalo Fire Department and Homeland Security were informed of the 2009 UASI funding earlier today in a conference call with DHS staff in Washington, DC.

“I know that the DHS staff today cited two UASI funding applications that stood out among the dozens they analyzed this year – Buffalo and San Diego – and I commend all of the city employees who contributed to this excellent outcome,” said Mayor Brown. “It wasn’t all that long ago – 2006 to be precise – when Buffalo and the other communities that comprise our regional Urban Area Security program nearly lost all of our federal funding for homeland security. Thanks to a strong and united effort then, particularly from the members of our federal legislative delegation led by Senator Chuck Schumer, we were able to preserve our UASI funding, even though it had been reduced significantly. Three years later, we have succeeded in increasing this critically important federal funding and are now acknowledged by DHS as presenting one of this year’s two strongest applications. We are very proud of this achievement.”

Buffalo’s 2009 UASI funding represented about $500,000 more than original DHS target level based on "effectiveness analysis" of final application, which was said to be attributable to quality assessments of the Buffalo funding submission.  Any DHS percentage change in funding for a region like Buffalo and its partner communities was capped at 10%, so DHS actually increased the Buffalo UASI’s funding by the maximum allowable in the program.

“This is a very strong outcome for Buffalo in terms of receiving the maximum possible increase in funding over the original DHS expected allocation and it’s important to acknowledge our lead staff on this effort – Captain Mark Makowski and Maureen Oakley of the Buffalo Police Department, Roger Lander, who coordinates the city’s Homeland Security activities through the Buffalo Fire Department, and Karen Stanley Fleming, our Administration’s grants coordinator in the Department of Administration and Finance. These people worked tirelessly to make this application succeed and they achieved their objective with an outstanding result.”

Within the federal UASI program, the Buffalo Urban Area encompasses the City of Buffalo, the City of Niagara Falls, Erie County and Niagara County.

Since the near defunding of federal UASI monies to the Buffalo Urban Area in 2006, Mayor Brown has met with the former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, his top deputies, worked closely with the region’s federal legislative delegation, testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security chaired by Congressman Peter King and this past April hosted a meeting at City Hall with U.S. Department of Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Jane Holl Lute during her tour of the Buffalo Niagara region.

“I am convinced that our dedicated collaborative efforts to demonstrate the critical need for UASI funding for Buffalo and our region, along with the exceptional work of our staff members, has enabled our city and region to not only retain this federal funding over the past three years, but to now see that funding increased in the 2009 round of DHS UASI funding,” said Mayor Brown.