City of Buffalo Common Council — Civil Service Committee·September 22, 2026
Forty seconds of business: Everhart seated on the committee, four appointments received and filed. The city now has a Chief Data Officer (Nathan Ignatz, $124,676) and a Fair Housing Officer ($73,542). Ten items stay tabled, including two $124,676 finance posts and a fertility-coverage resolution from 2021.
The Committee on Civil Service was called to order at 9:45 with four of the Council's nine members answering — Bryan Bollman (Lovejoy), David Rivera (Niagara), Zeneta Everhart (Masten) and Majority Leader Leah Halton-Pope (Ellicott) — and the first order of business was to make the committee whole. “We are going to appoint President Pro Tempore Everhart to the committee,” the presiding member said; Rivera seconded. Civil Service is a four-seat committee, and the summary minutes do not print who holds the seats. Two weeks earlier, on September 8, the same committee sat Bollman, Mitchell Nowakowski, Rivera and Rasheed Wyatt. On Tuesday Nowakowski and Wyatt were absent, along with Joel Feroleto, Joseph Golombek and Christopher Scanlon.
With Everhart seated, Halton-Pope moved to receive and file items one through four — the four Notices and Certificates of Appointment on the new-items list. Rivera seconded. No one spoke to any of them. The substantive one is Item 3, docket 26-000410: the appointment of Nathan Ignatz as Chief Data Officer, an exempt, flat-rate position in the Department of Management Information Systems at a starting salary of $124,676. The certificate in the packet is signed by Chief Information Officer Daryl Springer as appointing authority, dated August 28, with the appointment effective August 31 — twenty-two days before the committee saw it. The Council referred it to committee on September 15.
Item 4, docket 26-000598, is the appointment of a Fair Housing Officer, surname Montanez, exempt and flat-rate, in the Department of Permits and Inspections at $73,542. Item 2, 26-000595, appoints Tara Sharee Graham as a temporary Account Clerk Typist in Assessment and Taxation at the minimum of the grade, $41,887; the Council referred it September 1. Item 1, 26-000610, is a Notice of Appointment of a provisional Paralegal, surname Penman, in the Mayor's Executive Department — Real Estate; the record gives no salary. The motion carried without audible dissent, and the motion to adjourn followed two seconds later, seconded by Everhart. From the countdown clock that opened the stream to “thank you,” the recording runs 44 seconds.
Nothing, in practice. Under Section 24-2 of the City Charter and Chapter 35-1 of the Ordinances, a department head who hires or promotes someone transmits a Certificate of Appointment to the City Clerk certifying that Human Resources/Civil Service has approved the person for the position. The Council refers the certificate to this committee, which receives and files it — that is, notes it for the record. The committee is not confirming the hire; the appointment is already effective on the date the department set (August 31, in the Chief Data Officer's case). What the committee produces is a recommendation, and the full Council acts on it at its next regular session. A tabled item, by contrast, stays in committee until someone moves to take it from the table; Tuesday, no one did.
The docket's second page is longer than its first, and it did not come up. Ten items sit under “Tabled Items,” each marked “9/8/26 CS” — the date of the committee's last meeting, when they were tabled or re-tabled — and each carrying a legacy docket number whose prefix is the year the matter entered the Council's books. Read that way, the list runs from 2021 to this summer.
The two with money attached are appointments: a Deputy Finance Officer (Seaman, Item 5, 26-000376) and a Director of Treasury (Cardone, Item 6, 26-000377), both exempt, both at $124,676 — the same figure as the Chief Data Officer whose certificate went through Tuesday in the same breath as a clerk-typist's. Why two senior finance posts are held in committee while a comparable MIS post is not is not something the record explains, and no one asked.
The other eight are Council members' own letters and resolutions. Halton-Pope's resolution requesting supplemental vacancy, workforce-separation and demographic data (Item 7, MT 26-748) stayed tabled while she moved every other motion of the morning. Wyatt, absent, has three: concerns about city employee salaries (Item 8, MT 26-279), a letter requesting that Human Resources and Public Works attend a Civil Service Committee meeting (Item 9, MT 25-1792) — neither department was heard from Tuesday — and a request for a report on grievances, hiring and terminations (Item 14, MT 25-522). Everhart's letter regarding the Water Authority and working conditions (Item 10, MT 25-1652) dates to 2025. Bollman has two from 2023: safety and fire emergency coordination (Item 12, MT 23-1569) and, with Nowakowski, a report request on civil-service employment of people living with disabilities (Item 13, MT 23-1659). The oldest, Item 11, MT 21-428, is a resolution by Scanlon, Pridgen, Bollman and Rivera on covering in vitro fertilization and fertility-preservation treatments in city health insurance, filed with its resolves excepted. It has outlived one sponsor's Council service: Pridgen no longer sits on the nine-member body.
Vintages are read from the MT docket prefix; all ten were last tabled September 8, 2026.
Built from the city's recorded votes in the CivicClerk agenda items and the summary minutes, cross-checked against the tape. The tape has one motion covering Items 1–4 and no roll call; the record breaks it into four votes with two different tallies (see Editor's Note). Four members present; no recusals. The ten tabled items were not taken up and have no recorded vote.
Moved by the presiding member, seconded by Rivera. No vote is audible; the motion does not appear in the items record or the summary minutes. Everhart votes on all four recorded items.
Moved Halton-Pope, seconded Rivera. Ayes recorded: Bollman, Rivera, Everhart, Halton-Pope. No salary stated in the record. The items file also carries a second, empty vote entry under this item.
Moved Halton-Pope, seconded Rivera. Ayes recorded: Rivera, Everhart, Halton-Pope. Bollman is not recorded on this or the next two items, though he was present and voted on Item 1; the tape records a single motion for all four.
Moved Halton-Pope, seconded Rivera. Ayes recorded: Rivera, Everhart, Halton-Pope. Certificate of Appointment signed by Chief Information Officer Daryl Springer as appointing authority, dated August 28, 2026; title code 3669; salary range of position $124,676. Flagged as the docket's senior appointment.
Moved Halton-Pope, seconded Rivera. Ayes recorded: Rivera, Everhart, Halton-Pope. The record gives the appointee's surname only.
Both last tabled September 8, 2026. Neither was mentioned on the tape; the minutes record the disposition “Tabled” with no mover, seconder or vote.
All last tabled September 8, 2026. None was mentioned on the tape. Item 14's second attachment is labeled “26-522” against the item's MT 25-522; the item title is used here.
Moved Halton-Pope, seconded Everhart.
A pro forma meeting, reported as one. The City's video runs 2.3 minutes; the first 91 seconds are a pre-roll and a countdown, and the committee's business occupies about 40 seconds after that. This brief leads with the docket because the docket is where the content is. Timecodes are recording positions, not clock times.
Where the record and the tape disagree. The tape has one motion — “receive and file items one through four” — with no roll call taken. The city's recorded votes split it into four motions and give Item 1 a 4–0 tally including Bollman but Items 2–4 a 3–0 tally without him; Bollman was present throughout and the tape gives no reason for the difference. The motion seating Everhart on the committee is on the tape and absent from the written record. The ten tabled items carry the disposition “Tabled” in the minutes with no mover or vote, consistent with the tape, on which they are never mentioned. The items file also contains two empty vote entries (under Item 1 and under the “Tabled Items” header), which are treated as artifacts.
Names and corrections. Council members and districts are from the verified roster; Whisper's “Balman” is Bollman and “President Pro Tempest” is President Pro Tempore. The committee chair is not named on the tape or in the summary minutes, so the member who called the roll and the Everhart motion is described only as presiding. Appointees are named as the official record names them — two by surname only (Penman, Montanez), two in full (Tara Sharee Graham, Nathan Ignatz) — with titles and salaries from the same record; the Chief Information Officer's name is from the signed certificate in the packet. No name in this brief comes from audio alone. Docket “vintages” on the tabled list are read from the year prefix of each item's legacy MT number, not from a filing date in the packet.
Other checks. The street check found no street references in the transcript. The interests watchlist was checked against every name and entity on the docket; no match.