A taste of waste with NFC, USA Niagara and NTCC

A taste of bed tax money... A taste much sweeter than wine

During the last few weeks, we reviewed waste running rampant in Niagara Falls. Money spent on Hard Rock concerts and Holiday Markets that lost every dime; and millions given to hotel corporations that can easily fund themselves. Big hotels. 
And grants given to Democratic Party leaders and campaign contributors of Mayor Paul Dyster.
 
We reported how Mayor Dyster converted the NFC to a grant-giving arm of the city - grants made to campiagn contributors and wealthy corporations. NFC used to make loans and fund itself. We revealed how USA Niagara, in a little-known deal with the city, uses $3.1 million annually of city money. Then, after paying hefty salaries to themselves, USA Niagara officials invest a portion of the city’s own money back into the city - just the opposite of what they were created to do –invest state money into the city. 

We told you how the city agreed to pay up to $1 million per year in losses to fund the state-run, tiny Conference Center and operate Old Falls Street. And how every year that’s exactly what the two somehow managed to lose – almost to the penny - one million - the bill sent to the city. 

This week we looked at the hotel bed tax, a 5 percent fee charged to every hotel on every room rented, an added tax that makes staying here for tourists more expensive and means less money in hoteliers’ pockets. 

Wouldn’t you know it, Niagara Falls managed to take this tourism chance and waste it too.

When you hear what happens to the $1.7 million hoteliers pay the city, you will not be pleased - unless of course you’re part of the privileged few who carve up the $1.7 million.

80 percent of the bed tax money goes to a shadowy organization called the Niagara Tourism and Convention Corporation (NTCC) that hides behind the claim that, because it is a private corporation, it doesn’t have to disclose how it spends taxpayer money. 

NTCC President John Percy, the Reporter learned, makes more than $120,000 per year plus an expense account of up to $70,000 each year. 

On top of that, the operating agreement with the city, set to expire next June, allows Percy to make up almost any number he likes to prove the return the city gets on its investment (ROI). When you hear how they calculate it, you will laugh at how elected leaders could accept such trash. 

On top of that, the remaining $300,000, what city leaders call the “leftover bed tax money” is used by the mayor and council to spread to various organizations in the city that have plenty of members who vote.