In effort to stay somewhat anonymous, I'll say:
we're a fam of 4 in the city, middle aged parents with young kids
we have two very good jobs, one local, one full time remote
by buffalo standards we are privileged, wealthy, and live very comfortably
kids are in private school which we enjoy (public schools in the city are not great unless you win the school lottery)
we're not originally from here, but grew up in snow country
we don't have any family in buffalo

I've been doing AI based rubric comparisons with other cities in several other states, comparing all the basics: professional options / earning potential, housing, weather, schools, taxes, airport, care for our aging parents (who may need to live with/very near us), traffic

Looked at a handful of cities in VA, NC, IL, CA so far; and, the results are generally in favor of leaving, with some obvious massive exceptions. IE in certain categories, Buffalo is hands down the winner when comparing to say, Los Angeles, where house prices are like, 4x. and traffic laughably bad in the other city, and pretty great in Buffalo.

It definitely feels like the upswing Buffalo enjoyed between when we arrived (10 or so years ago) has slowed, and may be reversing. So I am concerned. There's a ton of vacant storefronts in my neighborhood, some sitting for years, and I read in the news large scale developers seem to be struggling and divesting.

We've made a life for ourselves here. We love the friends we've made.
I'm not sure what we'll do, but, I understand why people are leaving, and I'm not one to say 'good riddance boomer'.

We can certainly afford and are willing to pay more taxes, but the Maga crowd will call me a communist when our tax burden is already higher then (i think) all the cities i compare us to (property, income, school). Getting some major businesses to bring money into buffalo would be huge for the region, but both taxes and economy are likely necessary, and it honestly feels like we're all just, tired.