At 3:46 pm on Friday, I received my long-awaited response to my appeal of Erie County’s Buffalo Bills stadium renovation study that the county released only after blacking out all the informative bits. Here’s what I had written to the county’s Freedom of Information Law appeals officer back on October 12, after the redacted study failed to shed any light whatsoever on whether the study really showed, as a Bills rep had claimed, that the entire upper deck would “have to be replaced” at a cost of $500 million, and renovation overall would cost $1 billion:
The records that were redacted include the projected cost of maintenance and repairs to Highmark Stadium and any information regarding how that figure was calculated. I am now seeking the additional release of only those sections of the report, which should not violate either safety or contracting concerns.
And here’s the first page of what I received:
Deep, exasperated sigh.
That’s from page 7 of the full report; what I really wanted was to see the blacked-out sections of the executive summary on pages 5 and 6, where two whole paragraphs were redacted right before the phrase “In addition to the structural deficiencies” — which strongly implies those missing paragraphs were about the structural deficiencies in the current stadium, and maybe how much they would cost to repair. But this time around I didn’t get pages 1-6 at all, with no explanation.
[UPDATE: Just got (11:14 am on 11/8) a reply that the executive summary redactions were all retained because “the information that remains redacted has been defined as something that would publicly reveal structural elements currently unknown to the public and releasing it would create an opportunity for a threat to public safety.”]
There are a few new unredacted parts of the study that provide hints, at least, to how much repair work might cost. For example:
The 300 level is the Bills stadium’s top deck, the one that that Bills spokesperson had said was so badly deteriorated that it made renovation “not realistic.” With all the details of what would be getting repaired having been redacted, it’s hard to tell exactly what’s going on here — for starters, are those $91,000 in “single occurrence repairs” on top of the $140,000 in “annual” repairs, or part of them? Still, one thing is evident: The repairs itemized in the Erie County report amount to something in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, which implies it would take until at least the year 3021 for a full renovation to cost anything like the $1 billion the team has claimed.
(We do still have that separate state study that placed an $862 million price tag on renovation, but that’s mostly a wishlist of things the Bills owners might want, not a list of things that actually have to be done to keep the stadium safe and operational.)
And then there are the rare pages in the report with no redactions at all, like this one:
Those railings look fine to me, but I’m not a structural engineer, so really someone should ask some engineers to evaluate the conditions and indicate how much they would cost to fix, and then issue some sort of report that … oh, that’s what this report was meant to do, but the answers are a state secret? Even from the taxpayers being asked to foot the bill? Then I’m going with “those railings look fine to me” — it may be an uneducated assessment, but it’s still more informed than what you’ll get from a page of black bars.
I had to look up what vomitory means, it’s not what you think.
Yeah, it’s where fans are, uh, ejected from the seating bowl.
Preferably, to billionaires, by catapult.
And I thought Bills fans exited the stadium by jumping through folding tables from the upper deck.
What a word vomitory is. It certainly doesn’t sound like it would be a passage for leaving a stadium.
Well, it is Buffalo (more or less) after all Tom…
Next to the Vet or the original Meadowlands, I’d have to think this would be the place you’d actually need a vomitorium.
On another note, if the old Auditorium was just called the Aud, can we call the former Rich stadium “the Vom”?
More Latin!
Possibly there is a potential class action lawsuit by the Bill’s fans for the stadium construction that might cause vomiting?
My god, how frustrating to see the basic machinery of representative government so crudely and blatantly subverted in the service of corporate welfare. Let’s parse that dire statement absolving the county from telling the taxpayer where their money is going:
“the information that remains redacted has been defined as something that would publicly reveal structural elements currently unknown to the public and releasing it would create an opportunity for a threat to public safety.”
* The passive voice, first refuge of those looking to deflect, defer, and deny.
* A structural element that is unknown to the public? Something different from anything visible to anyone who watched the place be built? Something that no engineer could devise?
* This “opportunity for a threat,” is that a large opportunity? Small? A thermal exhaust port?
* All risk is not equal, unless you’re trying to throw sand in someone’s eyes. Are these county attorneys thinking that ISIS is coming to cut through exposed rebar?
Invoking “safety” has become the default position for anyone who wants to stifle further discussion. Personally I become warier when a politician talks about safety, because they are almost certainly hiding something. And it’s usually money.
It is a disgrace, Ralph. The notion that the stadium “might be” unsound is almost certainly a bald faced lie as well.
If there was any doubt about it’s capacity to host games safely, games would not be played there as the insurer would pull liability coverage (leaving either the Pegulas or the county/state exposed… likely along with the league as well).
Liability likely would not attach to all parties, but you know how it goes in a major disaster… everybody gets sued and the lawyers sort it out in court.
Ding. Ding. Ding.
You would be correct. Great insight.
I believe the “stop fixing the stadium so they have to build us a new one” phase has begun. Unfortunately this stadium looks pretty good. They’ll have to send someone to smash a sewage pipe or dislodge a high brick or something if they want to get this to work.
Hmmmn. So the structural issues themselves do not pose a risk to the public. But TELLING the public about them could do so.
Are we back to the “el Mystico and Janet” construction sketch where, so long as the tenants believe the building is sound, it will remain standing?