A Give and Take With Piccirillo on Student Pay Plan

How about paying people with dogs to live in Niagara Falls. Then you get dog license money too.

How about paying short women to live in Niagara Falls?

The Niagara Falls Reporter did an interview—or maybe a debate- with Seth Piccirillo on his program to pay college graduates to live in targeted areas in Niagara Falls.

Seth Piccirillo: Creative young professionals make decisions on where they are going to live. We have to build neighborhoods that attract them here.

Reporter: Why is that government’s job?

SP: Because the market hasn’t created those neighborhoods, so you have to stimulate them.

R: Wouldn’t it be better to have a free market develop?

SP: The free market hasn’t developed it.

R: Could it be because taxes are too high?

SP: The government must become involved…  If population continues to decline, we are no longer a city. So we have to attract people and provide the living space they are looking for. We want to pay college graduates $300 dollars per month…. to incentivize them to move into specific neighborhoods.  

R: Why should taxpayers pay people to live in a city? It could set a horrid precedent. Suppose other cities employed the same idea.  It would create the opposite of what America is, a place of freedom of movement where people move and live where they think best to one where one government pays and another competes to attract certain people.

SP: We don’t have a college graduate, young professional demographic right now. We need a strategy to get them here.
R: How about cutting expenses and reducing taxes as a way to attract people?

SP: Tax issues are something I cannot address right now.  But if we drop into the 40,000’s (population), we no longer have the same city status. You won’t have community development money any more.

R: So what? Let the law of supply and demand, natural law kick in and let people come and go without paying them to be here.
SP: If we were to allow only supply and demand, with no (government) attention, then our tourism area will always be surrounded by blighted neighborhoods, as it has been through supply and demand.

R: If government got off the backs of the people, the people would prosper as they did for more than 150 years in America.  Niagara Falls was not always blighted.

SP: I don’t think the market would invest in this area without (government) incentives.  Look at Elmwood Village (in Buffalo). There was government involvement in that. It is a night and day difference. There are young people there spending money. They have the target market that we want.

R:  But they have the State University on Elmwood Ave. (12,000 students). That’s why there are students on Elmwood. I remember that area before it was Elmwood Village, just plain old Elmwood Ave. with hard working immigrants and second generation Americans. It was a beautiful neighborhood without being created by government. 

 SP: This is 2012. Today we have to take every resource and tool, whether it is government or non-government, to redevelop neighborhoods. If we don’t, we will continue to decline and you’re saying ‘let it happen.’

R: Does this mean that government not the people have to do everything? Niagara Falls has a tourist attraction.  Why is it we have this much tourism and are still broke? 

SP: In the past poor decisions were made by government. We didn’t invest (in tourism) because we didn’t think industry was going to leave.

R: So then it was not the free market that created the problem, but government? They created the Urban Renewal Plan that wiped out homespun tourism. Albany took our tourism and our hydro-power. I’d say it was government. Now you want more government to solve the problem government created?

SP: If the city drops below 50,000 people, then it will not qualify for the annual $3 million in HUD funding.

R I would say if you have to pay people to live here, if that is what you are going to do with the money,  I think it would be a darn good thing if we lost the money. Let the people in other states keep their money since we are too stupid to know what to do with it.