Wheatfield pursues local hiring policy

by Larry Austin
Niagara Wheatfield Tribune, April 19, 2007

Members of the Wheatfield Town Cheerleaders were honored before the start of the Wheatfield Town Board meeting Monday with a proclamation commemorating their recent trip to a national cheerleading competition in Florida, where the group took two first-place prizes. The group then favored the audience and the board with a cheer and short routine. (photo by Larry Austin)

The Town Board of Wheatfield adopted a hiring policy Monday that would require a 30 percent hiring requirement for local workers in any public contract.

The act is aimed at keeping more money in the local economy.

Following a public hearing at Monday’s Town Board meeting, the board voted 5-0 for the measure, which comes in the wake of the October storm that left widespread tree damage in the Niagara Frontier.

Wheatfield Town Supervisor Tim Demler said local workers were shut out of the hiring process for cleanup work after the storm.

“We had a lot of damage here. A lot of local firms had an opportunity, or could have had the opportunity, to do a lot of clean-up work using FEMA money,” Demler said. “Yet firms from Alabama came into Erie and Niagara counties to do the clean-up work, and none of those dollars stayed in our economy, employed any of our local people or benefitted our local economy.”

“I think that’s just one example of how we would request that public contract projects be bid, requesting that 30 percent of the workforce be Niagara County people,” Demler said.

The town government is hoping to be one of the first communities in Niagara County to institute the policy, Demler said.

Audience member John Simon asked how the proposal would integrate with state or county requirements. Town attorney Robert O’Toole noted that some such contracts have “set-aside” requirements for minority employment or female contractors.

“This certainly isn’t opposed to that,” O’Toole said. “It’s really in conjunction with that.”

A local PILOT agreement, or payment in lieu of taxes, is also subject to the hiring policy, O’Toole said.

The Niagara Organizing Alliance for Hope is a proponent of the measure. The Rev. Rex Stewart, co-chair of NOAH, told the board that the move makes a lot of sense.

“As the money is given in wages to workers who are from your community, they’re going to be able to buy houses, shop in your stores, pay your local taxes, and that will benefit everybody,” Stewart said. Only one local company worked on a local ethanol plant built recently, with the bulk of the laborers coming from Minnesota, Stewart said. The Minnesotans built the plant and then left. “All those wages left with them,” Stewart said. “This is the kind of thing that can help stem that kind of money flow out of the county.”