Common Council Civil Service Committee·September 8, 2026
Under three minutes, four members, 48 items. Four appointments were recommended (an auditor, two sanitation supervisors, a mechanic), three received and filed, and 30 more — lifeguards to a $123,355 Division Chief — went to the full Council without recommendation because members could not open them in the new agenda system. Eleven items stay tabled.
Four of the nine council members answered the 9:45 roll — Mitchell Nowakowski (Fillmore), David Rivera (Niagara), Rasheed Wyatt (University) and Bryan Bollman (Lovejoy) — and the presiding member announced a quorum and said the committee would “go from the top.” The top went quickly. Nowakowski moved items 1 and 2 as received and filed, Rivera seconded, and both carried 4–0. Nowakowski then moved items 3 through 7 “for approval,” Wyatt seconded, 4–0. That put a committee recommendation behind Chakraborty as provisional Assistant Auditor in the Comptroller's office at the $58,535 maximum, Cornman and Zybala as permanent Supervisors of Streets Sanitation 1 at $56,773, and Linkowski as a permanent Motor Equipment Mechanic at $56,070. (The city's written record disagrees with the tape on item 7, the seasonal laborer McCants; see the Editor's Note.)
Item 8 — Savage, provisional Superintendent of Fleet Maintenance at a $76,000 maximum — had been read into the record when Wyatt interrupted. “Can we send these items without recommendation?” he asked. “We've been having a problem going on to the system to even evaluate them.” He had spoken with staff, he said, who were “having a tough time” too, and he wanted the items sent up unreviewed “so that we get a chance to go through before council meeting.” The presiding member did not resist. “Truthfully, I don't have a problem,” came the reply, with a diagnosis: “there have been some glitches with the system,” and “some of it is because the departments are actually inputting more information than they traditionally did.” One example was offered — item 34, the Certificate of Appointments for Coles, Bilbraut and Bell, where the committee “were prepared to question what the salary is” and “the certificate of employment wasn't signed.”
The rest was procedure. Nowakowski moved item 8 without recommendation, then items 9 “through and including 37” the same way; Rivera seconded; the record shows 4–0 on each. Thirty personnel actions — 19 notices of appointment, six of them seasonal lifeguards at $20 an hour, two status changes, eight direct appointments and one certificate — left the committee with no position taken. A motion to adjourn followed, seconded by Wyatt. The committee's business, from quorum to gavel, occupied about two minutes and fifty seconds of the recording.
The pattern worth noting is not the speed. Buffalo's Civil Service Committee is routinely a fast meeting, and personnel notices are routinely uncontested. It is that the only items to receive a recommendation were the ones read before the system came up: the committee's positive view of a $58,535 auditor and its silence on a $123,355 Division Chief reflects the order of the agenda, not a judgment about either hire. The full Council will take up all 37 at its next regular session, and the 30 unreviewed ones arrive with Wyatt's stated intention that members read them first.
Buffalo's committees do not make final decisions on appointments; the full Common Council does, at its next regular session, acting on what the committee sends. A committee can send an item three ways. Rec. Approve means the committee looked and endorses it. Receive & File means the item is noted for the record with no action — used Tuesday for two laborers and a complaint clerk, though the tape does not explain why those three and not the others. Without Recommendation means the item goes up with no committee position at all; the Council votes cold. None of the three stops an appointment. Tabled is the one that does: a tabled item stays in committee and does not move unless a member moves to take it up. Eleven items sat in that category Tuesday, several for years.
Every line on a Buffalo personnel docket is a compressed sentence: Notice of Appointment — Supervisor of Streets Sanitation 1 (Perm) (Max $56,773) Cornman. The title is the civil-service title; the surname is the appointee as the City Clerk's record gives it; the dollar figure is the step of the pay range — Min, Inter or Max — at which the person is being placed. The first parenthesis is the appointment's legal status under New York's Civil Service Law. Perm is a permanent appointment from a competitive eligible list. Prov is provisional — filled before an exam has produced a list, and held only until one does; ten of Tuesday's 37 were provisional, including the Assistant Auditor, the Fleet Maintenance superintendent and two Personnel Assistants at $43,930. Temp and Seasonal are time-limited: the six lifeguards, three seasonal laborers, a building inspector, an electrical inspector, a boiler inspector, two park supervisors and a head janitor. Exempt means the post is outside competitive testing altogether, filled at the appointing officer's discretion — Tuesday's one exempt item was Finnegan as Deputy Commissioner of Streets and Sanitation, and the two tabled finance posts are exempt as well.
The salaries on the docket ran from $19.70 an hour (a permanent Laborer II status change, Candelario) and $20 an hour (the lifeguards) to $123,355 for Bourgeois as a permanent Division Chief at the range minimum, the largest figure to leave the committee. The Deputy Commissioner's pay is printed as “Flat 1339460” in both the items list and the minutes; the figure is evidently missing punctuation or a digit, and this page reports it as printed rather than guess. Two Notice of Status Change items — Holman, General Mechanic, $52,979 maximum; Candelario, Laborer II — are existing employees moving to permanent status, not new hires. Item 34, the unsigned certificate covering Coles, Bilbraut and Bell, carries no titles or salaries in the public record at all.
The agenda's “Tabled Items” section carried eleven entries, none of which was named on the recording; the record lists each as Tabled with no mover, seconder or vote, which is what a standing tabled list looks like when no one moves to take anything off it. Two are appointments: Seaman as Deputy Finance Officer and Cardone as Director of Treasury, both exempt, both at $124,676 — higher than anything the committee sent up Tuesday. The other nine are council members' own filings that have been waiting on the department side: Wyatt's request for a report on grievances, hiring and terminations (MT 25-522), his letter asking Human Resources and Public Works to attend the committee (MT 25-1792), and his concerns about city employee salaries (MT 26-279); Halton-Pope's resolution seeking supplemental vacancy, workforce-separation and demographic data (MT 26-748, filed twice under two docket numbers, 26-000379 and 26-000492); Everhart's letter on the Water Authority and working conditions (MT 25-1652); Bollman's on safety and fire emergency coordination (MT 23-1569); a Bollman–Nowakowski report request on civil-service employment of people living with disabilities (MT 23-1659); and a resolution on in vitro fertilization and fertility-preservation coverage in the city's health insurance whose sponsor line — Scanlon, Pridgen, Bollman, Rivera — and file number, MT 21-428, date it to 2021 and to a Council that has since changed. Wyatt's Tuesday complaint about being unable to evaluate items is, in substance, the same request as his tabled letter asking HR and DPW to come explain them.
Built from the city's recorded vote record (items list) and the summary minutes, cross-checked against the tape. Four members sat: Bollman, Nowakowski, Rivera, Wyatt; every recorded vote was 4–0 with no nays or abstentions. Docket numbers are the city's (26-000xxx). Mover on every motion: Nowakowski. Items 9–37 were disposed of in a single motion on tape; the record logs each item separately with the same vote. Timecodes are recording positions.
Moved with item 2 as a pair; seconded by Rivera. Attachment: certificate of appointment dated 8/28/2026.
No salary printed. The record carries two vote entries for this item, one with zero votes logged and one 4–0; the minutes' detail page shows the empty one. Treated as a data-entry duplicate; the tape records one motion.
Moved with items 4–7 “for approval”; seconded by Wyatt.
Record double-entered (two identical 4–0 votes). One motion on tape.
On the recording Nowakowski moved items “three, four, five, six and seven” as “marked for approval.” The city's vote record and summary minutes log item 7 as Rec. Receive & File, seconded by Wyatt, 4–0. The written record is treated as authoritative here and the discrepancy is noted; the practical difference for a seasonal laborer is nil, since neither disposition blocks the appointment.
Read into the record, then held while Wyatt asked that this and the remaining items go up without recommendation because members could not get into the agenda system to evaluate them. The presiding member agreed, citing “glitches with the system,” departments entering more information than before, and an unsigned certificate on item 34. Moved without recommendation by Nowakowski, seconded by Rivera. Record double-entered (one 4–0, one empty).
Moved by Nowakowski, seconded by Rivera. The record logs each item with its own 4–0 vote (most double-entered with an empty duplicate; item 9 triple-entered; item 11's second entry has a blank motion name). As recorded:
9 · 26-000224 · Administrative Assistant (Prov)(Min $52,685) · Lopez
10 · 26-000253 · Animal Shelter Worker (Perm)(Min $41,133) · Carter
11 · 26-000269 · Laborer II (Seasonal)(Min $41,133) · Heath
12 · 26-000165 · Appoint Building Inspector (Temp)(Min $49,744) · Patti
13 · 26-000284 · Supervisor of Maintenance 1 (Prov)(Max $65,194) · Maund
14 · 26-000285 · Sr. Account Clerk Typist (Prov)(Min $44,371) · Dugo
15 · 26-000215 · Superintendent, Streets Sanitation (Perm)(Min $60,084) · Fiorella
16 · 26-000290 · Laborer II (Perm)(Min $41,133 / Max $46,837) · Watson
17 · 26-000203 · Deputy Commissioner of Streets & Sanitation (Exempt)(“Flat 1339460” as printed) · Finnegan
18 · 26-000225 · Laborer II (Seasonal)(Flat $41,133.60) · Oshirak
19 · 26-000192 · Senior Engineering Aide (Prov)(Min $48,558) · Rivera Arroyo
20 · 26-000228 · Status Change — General Mechanic (Perm)(Max $52,979) · Holman
21 · 26-000235 · Status Change — Laborer II (Perm)(Min $19.70/hr) · Candelario
22–27 · 26-000180, -183, -185, -187, -188, -306 · Lifeguard (Seasonal)($20/hr) · Edwards, Lloyd, Fekula, Ologbenla, Weatherston, Towles-Schwen
28 · 26-000190 · Park Supervisor I (Temp)(Max $61,827) · Merkl
29 · 26-000191 · Park Supervisor I (Temp)(Inter $55,646) · Runge
30 · 26-000351 · Appoint Head Janitor (Temp)(Max $48,148) · Lugo
31 · 26-000348 · Appoint Division Chief (Perm)(Min $123,355) · Bourgeois
32 · 26-000184 · Appoint Electrical Inspector (Temp)(Inter $61,223) · Gallagher (amended certificate)
33 · 26-000170 · Appoint Boiler Inspector (Temp)(Max $68,269) · Twitchell
34 · 26-000243 · Certificate of Appointments · Coles, Bilbraut, Bell — no titles or salaries printed; certificate described on tape as unsigned
35 · 26-000257 · Appoint Personnel Assistant (Prov)(Min $43,930) · Monegro
36 · 26-000262 · Appoint Personnel Assistant (Prov)(Min $43,930) · Welch
37 · 26-000266 · Appoint Compensation & Benefits Specialist (Prov)(Inter $54,483) · Croom
38 · 26-000376 · Appoint Deputy Finance Officer (Exempt)($124,676) · Seaman · MT 26-1071
39 · 26-000377 · Appoint Director of Treasury (Exempt)($124,676) · Cardone · MT 26-970
40 · 26-000379 and 43 · 26-000492 · Halton-Pope — Resolution Requesting Supplemental Vacancy, Workforce Separation and Demographic Data · MT 26-748 (same matter, two docket numbers)
41 · 26-000488 · Wyatt — Resolution Requesting a Report on Grievances, Hiring and Terminations · MT 25-522 (attachment labeled “26-522”)
42 · 26-000490 · Scanlon, Pridgen, Bollman, Rivera — IVF and Fertility Preservation Treatments in City Health Insurance (Exc. Resolves) · MT 21-428
44 · 26-000495 · Wyatt — Concerns City Employee Salaries · MT 26-279
45 · 26-000496 · Wyatt — Letter Requesting HR and DPW to Attend Civil Service Committee · MT 25-1792
46 · 26-000498 · Everhart — Letter Regarding Water Authority and Working Conditions · MT 25-1652
47 · 26-000499 · Bollman — Safety and Fire Emergency Coordination · MT 23-1569
48 · 26-000502 · Bollman, Nowakowski — Report Request for Civil Service Employment of People Living with Disabilities · MT 23-1659
Seconded by Wyatt. Not logged in the items record.
The recording. The city's posted video runs 6.8 minutes; the first 3 minutes 24 seconds are a countdown and pre-roll. The committee's business runs from 3:24 to about 6:12. Timecodes above are recording positions. Chamber audio is clean; the transcript is lower-case throughout.
Where the record and the tape disagree. On item 7 (McCants, seasonal Laborer II) the mover said items 3 through 7 were “marked for approval”; the vote record and minutes log item 7 as Rec. Receive & File. The written record is used and the row is flagged. The items record also double-enters most votes (one entry with the 4–0 tally, one empty), triple-enters item 9, leaves the motion name blank on item 11's second entry, and lists Halton-Pope's MT 26-748 resolution twice under separate docket numbers; none of this changes any outcome. The minutes' detail page for item 2 shows the empty entry. The Deputy Commissioner's pay, “Flat 1339460,” is reproduced as printed. Adjournment is on tape but not in the items record.
Names. Council members are corrected against the verified roster: “Revera” to Rivera, “Bolman” to Bollman, and “council member White” to Wyatt (Wyatt seconded the motions the record attributes to him and was the fourth member present; no Council member is named White). The presiding member is not identified on the recording and committee chairs do not appear in the summary minutes, so the chair is described only as presiding. Appointees are named as the City Clerk's record names them — surname, title and salary step — and no further. No name in this brief rests on audio alone; no [*] flag was needed.
Other checks. The street check found no street references in the transcript. The interests watchlist was checked against every appointee, sponsor and department on the docket; no match. The count of 48 items is the city's own numbering in both the items list and the minutes.