As downtown Buffalo took on the feel of a ghost town on President’s Day, the disciplinary hearings brought by the Buffalo Police Department against Detective Dennis Delano came to an anticlimactic close. Only a handful of media people showed up to witness the final public hearing. Friends and family were also on hand to the end, notably Lynn DeJac, who had been wrongly found guilty of her daughter’s murder and had served 13 years in prison. She is free now, due in large part to Delano’s work.

Instead of waiting for City Hall to update its half-century old zoning and building codes, the Elmwood Village Association has taken matters into its own hands. The Elmwood Village Association is two steps away from having design standards approved by the city to preserve the unique, funky character of the area.

This week the Common Council received and filed a report by Lawrence Panaro, superintendent of streets sanitation in the City of Buffalo’s Division of Streets. Panaro’s report examines his division’s performance in clearing the snow that fell quickly and prodigiously on the city between December 19 and December 22—10.2 inches that Friday, followed by more snow and high winds all weekend long.