Mayor, Council get bed tax leftover spoils to do as they please

Glenn Choolokian, sole council member consistently opposed to boondoggle spending.

If it looks like pork, and tastes like pork, it's probably leftover bed tax money.

The city bed tax money “left over” after the NTCC gets 80 percent and 5 percent goes to the NFTA-trolley, is handed over to the council and the mayor. What a time they have. 

Since 2008, Dyster’ favorite charity, the NACC, got $150,000. What the NACC has to do with tourism is hard to pin down although it is a nice presence for artists and creative sorts.
 
Music is a big favorite too with the spendthrift guys and gals at City Hall. 

Ontario House Jazz Festival gets thousand every year. For years it was held on a vacant lot where the old Ontario House used to be, where jazz musicians played, paid by the owner. 

Now as a sign of how things change, the club is closed and razed and on the empty lot, taxpayers paid $30,000 a year for jazz musicians and organizers to have a jazz party where perhaps a thousand people attended. 

From free enterprise to taxpayers paying. But the name is the same. 

Then there is the billion dollar Hard Rock that got $150,000 from left over bed tax money because the casino money that was used to pay its  $557,000 in previous concerts ran dry. 

A blues festival got $2,500 this year. The new Jazz festival got $30,200. Gospel Fest got $2,000. 

There was the African American festival, the annual Main St. business festival, the annual Niagara St. business festival, the Pine Avenue business festival (which returned the money since they did not have a festival) and Niagara Rises. They all got from $1,000 to $2,500. Not enough to really do anything, but enough to remember to show appreciation - at the polls where it counts. it is hard to see how these local groups promote tourism. 

Of course this is not unique to Niagara Falls, but in a city this poor, the practice is hard to justify. 

Among $317,153 spent this year was money for little-league teams. The Summer Basketball Classics got $1,000. Niagara Power baseball team got $1,000. In 2011, the Niagara Falls Purple Eagles got $1,600 so they could make pins. The Cayuga Heat basketball team got $1,500.

$5,000 was given to the something called Canadian fireworks. The Niagara beautification program, headed by big get-out-the-vote woman, the influential Norma Higgs, got $5,000. 

NACC and the Jazz festival associated both got $30,000.

The Boundary Water treaty celebration was given $19,000 in 2009. That must have been a hell of a time. 

For the city that had to go after Wallenda for costs associated with his historic walk, the city was pleased to pony up more than $10,000 for Hard Rock’s portable potties. The Lasalle Yacht club got thousands for their party.  The HOG rally,  the NF Cruisers car club. You name it- if you are a group in Niagara Falls and you know how to vote, see a councilman or the mayor.  He’s always good for a touch with other people's money.
 
Only council member Glenn Choolokian has been adamant that we cannot afford this kind of government. 

The bed tax is supposed to be used to promote tourism and could be used to do entranceways for the city and clean and fix streets for a clean city promotes tourism better than little leagues and local festivals. 

It cannot be the role of government to fund everyone’s yacht club party or uniforms for a little league football teams – out of bed tax money - which is certainly not tourism related. 

So what’s next? 

Maybe we can get government to buy everyone a yacht so they can go to the party.