The City of Buffalo plans to issue a bond to pay for a proposed $43 million settlement to a woman who was paralyzed from the neck down in 2020 after being struck by a police SUV responding to a 911 call.
The settlement proposal would pay for Chelsea Ellis’ pain and suffering, lost wages and what it will cost to care for her the rest of her life.
If approved, the settlement amount would be the city’s largest to date, said Buffalo Common Council Member Christopher P. Scanlon, who represents the South District.
“This is an unprecedented settlement for the City of Buffalo,” Corporation Counsel Cavette A. Chambers told city lawmakers Monday.
“Once we tentatively agreed on a settlement, the next point was how does the city pay for it,” Chambers said, referring to the bond.
University Common Council Member Rasheed N.C. Wyatt said he did not know the terms of the bond, but said that generally the bonds issued by the city are 20- or 30-year bonds.
The details of the bond resolution will be discussed in the Council’s Finance Committee meeting next Tuesday. Wyatt is the chairman of the committee.
“This is an incident that’s tragic, but (taxpayers are) on the hook for $43 million,” he said Monday.
The $43 million tentative settlement amount represents about 7% of what the city spends in a year. The city’s budget for the current 2023-24 fiscal year includes $576 million in spending.
The proposed settlement amount, first reported by The Buffalo News, will be discussed and considered by the Council’s Claims Committee at its meeting Thursday.
Ellis, who was 28 at the time, was walking on a sidewalk on Main Street in North Buffalo with her friend Karley Mueller after a trip to the post office when the crash occurred on April 15, 2020.
Buffalo Police Officer Branden Lowe was driving to the scene of what would turn out to be a false report of a stabbing. Traveling at speeds approaching 80 mph, attorneys for Ellis say Lowe was…
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