Plan to Pay Grads Puts City in Bad Light

“You bring 20 people that stay here, how about the 100 that leave?” said Council Member Glenn Choolokian who is against the plan. “You cannot just pick a certain area and say 20 people are going to save it. The city should spend its limited funds on the people and businesses that are here! These are the people that deserve help if anyone does. They stuck it out!”

It impresses me how many people have heard about the Niagara Falls’ plan to pay college graduates to live here. That would be everyone heard.
 The plan is one conceived by  for Niagara Falls Community Development Director Seth Piccirillo.  His plan is to pay 20 people who received an associate degree or better within the past two years up to $3,500 per year for two years toward their student loan debt if they move into the downtown neighborhood of Third and Fourth Sts., bounded by Niagara and Cedar.
 The Associated Press, CBS news, Forbes, the Huffington Post, Good Morning America, ABC, the San Francisco Chronicle, Fox News and literally hundreds more news outlets got wind of how our “rapidly dwindling city” has a plan to pay college graduates to come live here.
 Here is a quote from a recent AP story published not only in America but overseas:
 “After the city's old strategy of industry over tourism flopped amid the decline of Rust Belt manufacturing and the disastrous Love Canal, a new economic plan appears to have emerged: Try anything.”
Mayor Paul Dyster pointed out to the world about Niagara Falls: “One in five people live in poverty and the population of 50,193 is less than half what it was in the 1960s.”
While newspapers wrote about our decline, they reported the Piccirillo plan is “bold,” “daring,” “broad” and “dramatic.”
The most ridiculous perhaps was ABC news when they compared Piccirillo to Wallenda: “In Niagara Falls, N.Y., a man shortly will attempt a daring feat—and he isn't Nik Wallenda: Seth Piccirillo, Niagara Falls' new director of community development, will attempt to lure young professionals to live in his city's beleaguered downtown, which for decades has been hemorrhaging residents--young ones especially.”
While Wallenda did his daring feat on his own and paid his own way, Piccirillo will do it by offering to help pay down other people’s college loans.
His daring feat will be done with taxpayer money.
Besides criticism of the plan in the Niagara Falls Reporter, a publication called The Australian wrote a snide headline: “Please come visit us, we'll pay you - Niagara Falls,” and Forbes took a serious but critical approach, writing, “There’s no joy in kicking Niagara Falls when it’s down, but lurking beneath this ‘innovative’ proposal are some real danger signs.”
Forbes deconstructed Picirillo’s use of Seattle’s Columbia City as a model for what he hopes to accomplish.
“Piccirillo …  is inspired by Seattle’s Columbia City neighborhood.”  But, Forbes wrote, Seattle’s “transformation began with artists and other pioneers who found gold restoring classic Craftsman homes near Rainier Avenue in the 1980s….
“The ‘they’ responsible for Columbia City’s transformation isn’t city officials. Rather than government setting up a trendy neighborhood, individual people simply started doing what they wanted to do, in a place where they found themselves particularly able to do it. Note that ‘the market’ is no more directly responsible for the change than the government. The market followed the pioneers.”
Piccirillo’s plan uses a federally-funded round robin:  A federal program (HUD) helps students pay off federally assisted college loans (Stafford loan program) so the city can keep its population above 50,000 in order to keep receiving (HUD) federal assistance.
With more than 30 percent overhead, the program requires $200,000 to hand out $139,680 to the 20 grads.
Forbes suggests it is “cross(ing) a vicious circle with a ponzi scheme.”
Still, in almost every story from news outlets reporting the plan, one sees a large color picture of Niagara Falls  --  stunning images - and no doubt some must wonder how such beautiful, natural scenery can be surrounded by such nincompoops that people must be imported and paid to live there.
Here are some of the hundreds of descriptions we got with our million dollars worth of bad press as they reported the brilliant plan:
ABC News described Niagara Falls as having a “beleaguered downtown which for decades has been hemorrhaging residents, young ones especially.”
Jewish World wrote Niagara Falls does “not boast the vitality and jobs” and has a “languishing downtown.”
Fiscal Times declared, “Niagara Falls’ downtown has fallen into disrepair over the years … (and ) looks like a dying town.”
News Day, showing a picture of Wallenda, who brought us millions in positive press, told how we “flopped” as a city.
Fox News used this headline: “Over a barrel, dying city seeks life in new grads.”

After Wallenda made us look like a glorious place, the Piccirillo plan reminded the world that only the waterfalls are attractive.
He told the world this town looks like hell; in fact it looks so bad we have to pay people to move here.