Angered by tickets for tall grass, Buffalo residents point to decrepit, eyesore city lots

Clare Felsman lives on the far East Side, next door to a boarded-up, city-owned house, where kids hang out on the crumbling porch and harass her.

But she’s the one police ticketed.

Her crime? The tiger lilies planted around her tree apparently constituted “high grass.”

Her brazen gardening has gotten her two $150 tickets while the city has yet to tear down the decrepit eyesore it owns right next door.

“How is giving a ticket for unmowed grass even helping anybody?” said Felsman, who has lived in the same house near Bailey and Walden avenues for 30 years.

“There are real people living here,” she said. “It’s not all drugs or thugs or gangs. To waste time – I had to take off work to fight the ticket.”

Mayor Byron W. Brown has been aggressive about addressing quality-of-life issues, increasing demolitions of vacant properties and establishing a 311 line, where residents can call about problems in their neighborhood and track their complaints. He has championed the city’s “Clean Sweep” program, which seeks to beautify neighborhoods and address a range of criminal activity. And the city’s efforts to incorporate the use of data in tackling quality-of-life issues has won it national recognition.

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