Donn Esmonde wrote an op-ed in the Buffalo News entitled: Bringing them all back home. There is an effort underway in Buffalo, New York to reclaim those whom the city has lost to greener pastures.

An excerpt follows:

She is swimming against a tidal wave. She is walking into a hurricane. She believes she will beat the odds and the elements.

Contrary to evidence, including a decades-long exodus, Marti Gorman thinks Buffalo’s renaissance has begun.

…

She is putting her pro-Buffalo conviction into motion. She and a dozen other True Believers are reviving, after 99 years, Buffalo Old Home Week. They are contacting folks who left – and they are legion – and inviting them to visit Aug. 24-27. If everybody comes, North Carolina will lose half of its population.

Barely 5 feet tall, fluent in three languages, Gorman is fueled by confidence, intelligence and a waterfall of energy. The talkative workaholic left Buffalo with no regrets 32 years ago. She recently returned and saw the city for what it is: An architectural museum close to water, with low-cost quality housing, minuscule commute times, 17 colleges and universities, big-city culture, great quality of life and a sense of community.

All of which, she says, overshadows the high-tax tonnage and consequent business flight that make this livable city so leave-able.

“Maybe I’m naive,” she said. “But I think the renaissance already has started.”

Planned are four days of tours, job fairs, parties and open houses, wrapped around the Elmwood arts festival.

The hope is that seeing will translate into staying, that expats will become repats – and buy a house or bring a business with them. Folks long gone bring fresh eyes and energy – they haven’t been beaten down by decades of petty politics and tail-first leadership.

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The hurricane in Gorman’s face is downstate’s control of Albany. The consequence is high health care and utility costs and generous public-worker wages and benefits. It leaves job-challenged upstaters carrying the heaviest tax load in the nation.

We lost nearly a third of our 25-to-34-year-olds in the past 14 years. That is the tsunami that Gorman and friends face. They think they are up to it.

“There is a lot to build on here,” she said, “that offsets the absurd taxes and political smallness.”

The odds are long. But the cause is just, and the spirit is strong. Let the crusade begin.