Niagara Fall's taxpayers will pay Hard Rock $42,000 to bring this man to town for two hours.

This year, $200,000 of Niagara Falls’ taxpayer money will be paid to the Hard Rock Café, Inc., to stage seven “free” concerts next to the Niagara Falls State Park. They starting last Saturday. The contract with the city allows Hard Rock to keep details of their spending confidential. The public is not permitted to know how much Hard Rock pays performers or how much taxpayer money they keep as profit. 

Hard Rock also makes profits from concessions. They have exclusive rights in the area surrounding the stage, next to the entrance to the State Park.

Hard Rock is a corporation with 150 locations, in 53 countries, owned by the Seminole Nation of Indians. The Seminoles paid $965 million for the corporation in 2006.

Since 2008, Niagara Falls paid Hard Rock  $707,097 for “free” concerts. 

Mayor Paul Dyster says Hard Rock concerts bring people to the city, fill hotels and enhance the city’s reputation. But Hard Rock concerts are on Saturday nights in July and August, peak tourist nights, when all the city’s 3,200 hotel rooms are normally filled with or without Hard Rock. If concerts were in early June or September, you might be able to measure whether Hard Rock brings increases in hotel occupancy. 

Because concerts are on the busiest nights of the year, Hard Rock gets extra customers going to the Niagara Falls State Park, tourists who had no intention of going to a concert, but stop to listen and buy a beer or burger. 

Today, the average American works 147 days per year to pay for federal and state government. Local taxes consume more of his days. Niagara County was the highest-taxed county in the U. S. in 2008, according to the Tax Foundation of Washington, D. C.

As Hard Rock takes taxpayer money to stage events so they can sell food, beverages and souvenirs, many taxpayers are struggling. Many deprive themselves and their children of things that would be a lot more valuable than concerts in order to pay their high property taxes. Some will lose their homes this year to tax foreclosure because they could not pay their property taxes.  

People are losing their homes while the city is spending tax dollars  for “free” concerts with no public disclosure of how $707,097 was spent.