Percy Still Spending Big Years After Critical Audit

John Percy

John Percy spent more than $30K on trips to India. He claims he brought Indian tourism here. The problem with this is that Indian tourism peaked before the NTCC was even created.

Out-of-control spending practices that led to a highly critical audit commissioned by the City Council two years ago seems to be continuing, even after a spate of bad publicity for John Percy’s Niagara Tourism and Convention Corp. Over the past eight years, the NTCC has sucked in $8,845,528 in bed tax money and another $5,354,280 from the local share of slot revenue generated by the Seneca Niagara Casino for a total of $14,199,808. 

Had the Senecas not reneged on their 2002 compact with the State of New York, Percy would have had another $5 million to be used for first class travel to exotic destinations, lavish dinners at four-star restaurants and a veritable Niagara of top-shelf booze for Percy, his domestic partner and various unnamed individuals Percy claims are important to tourism here. 

That people have been coming to see Niagara Falls for more than 300 years prior to Percy’s installation as head of a private corporation that is supposed to aid tourism, and that the falls themselves were written about by writers as diverse as Louis Hennepin, Charles Dickens, Louisa May Alcott, Abraham Lincoln, Oscar Wilde and Jack London in the centuries prior to his arrival, seem lost on Percy. 

To hear him tell it, each and every visitor to the city and every article written about Niagara Falls since his arrival have been directly attributable to him. His hubris is such that he is prone to brag about even the tiniest accomplishment. Take his report on activity at the $2.4 million government funded NTCC Visitor Center opened in 2010 on Rainbow Boulevard.

 “It’s wonderful to have a new facility, that really elevates the destination, elevates the image and allows us to portray that to visitors, so when they come in they will feel truly welcome,” Percy said when the 8,400-square-foot facility opened its doors. “It’s great to finally have a permanent state-of-the-art facility that we have been lacking. It’s been a deficit, a void for quite some time.” 

In his report to the city for the first quarter of 2012, Percy notes a measly 2,591 walk-ins at the center, a number that presumably includes members of the city’s homeless community coming in to get out of the cold. Assuming he didn’t fudge the numbers to make them look better, that means the “state of the art” center saw 43 people a day coming through its doors during January, February and March. Rather than questioning whether we needed to spend $2.4 million to open the center along with ongoing staffing, utility bills and other expenses, Percy looks on the bright side, comparing the paltry number of visitors to 2011, when things were even worse. “Vs. 1880 in 2011,” he notes dryly. 

In New York City, you can get 2,591 people to gather and watch the aftermath of a moderately serious automobile accident, and most mom and pop delicatessens even in the city’s hoariest neighborhoods would go broke after several 43 customer days. 

But it doesn’t matter to Percy. He collects his six-figure salary, travels like a rock star, and enjoys the perks of a private sector CEO based not on his skills in attracting tourists to Niagara Falls, but in wheedling as much cash as possible out of a bankrupt municipality that barely qualifies as a city. 
Percy notes the number of articles that mention Niagara Falls and appear in various publications, bragging as though he had something to do with it. 

During the first quarter of 2012 – aside from those concerning Nik Wallenda’s wire walk -- there were seven articles in the Niagara Gazette, the same number in the Buffalo News, two in the Tonawanda News, one in Niagara Frontier Publications, and one in Buffalo Business First. 

The articles concerned everything from the Maid of the Mist controversy to the airline Direct Air declaring bankruptcy. Percy’s report claims responsibility for them all.

 The quarterly reports are prepared to comply with the NTCC’s agreement with the city and have been the object of debate over the years. In 2010, the City Council ordered an audit of the agency’s financial records, a shameful report covering 2008 and 2009 and riddled with undocumented expenses, shoddy bookkeeping and errors. 

Trips to India, Great Britain, Las Vegas, Oregon and Albany were noted, including one four-day Indian jaunt that cost the people of Niagara Falls $18,579. Additionally, tens of thousands were spent on nightclub cover charges, liquor, dinners, tuxedo rentals and a notorious and whopping $18,736 in bills for “massage therapists.” 

The biggest boner pulled by Percy cited by the auditors came when he paid himself a $25,000 bonus on May 24, 2008, for the outstanding job he did the previous year. The auditors found that the bonus had never been approved by the NTCC Board of Directors or even that any board member was even aware of it.

On average, the city has spent $1,775,000 a year over the past eight years to support Percy and his operation. Every penny is money that might otherwise be spent fixing streets, keeping property taxes down, demolishing vacant and abandoned buildings or beefing up police protection in the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods. 

It would be difficult to convince longtime observers of the tourism scene here that Percy’s arrival has affected the number of visitors to the city – or the revenue those visitors generate for the local economy.  Those same observers, most of whom earn their livings from the private sector tourism industry here, would be the first to ask what we’re all paying for.