There is no such thing as bad press, the smart boys say, and the proof in the pudding just might lie with the Niagara Falls ’ plucky new head of community development, young Seth Piccirillo.

Piccirillo is the author of a plan that would pay recent college grads who might normally be horrified by the condition of our inner city neighborhoods to live in them.

Under the Piccirillo plan, your new next-door neighbor might not actually be a neighbor at all but someone paid by a government agency to occupy the house next to yours.

Piccirillo proposed spending $200,000 of federal grant money received by the Department of Community Development to subsidize college graduates to the tune of $3,492 a year for two years, a total of $6,984. The program is limited to 20 recent grads.

There's no obligation for program beneficiaries to stay any longer than the two years the money is being handed out, and not even an obligation to invest anything here, aside from monthly rent, which would pretty much be paid by the taxpayer.

In the week after the Niagara Falls Reporter published an expose about the proposal, Piccirillo and his plan were featured on Good Morning America, the Huffington Post, Forbes and the Buffalo News. Fox Business News called it "pretty clever."
Was the Reporter to blame for all the publicity?

At the June 11 City Council meeting, Chairman Fruscione and Council Member Glenn Choolokian chastised Piccirillo because the program hit the press in the form of a front page Buffalo News article before the council had been briefed on it.

Piccirillo told council members that someone leaked the story to the Reporter and he was concerned the Reporter story would be critical of the program so he felt the need to talk to the News so that the daily paper would come out ahead of our weekly.

Choolokian told the Reporter about talking to Piccirrilo about what happened. “I said, ‘I don't want to hear about the Reporter. I am looking at the front page of the Buffalo News and there is a picture of you in front of a house. It looks like someone did a lot of work to set this story up.'”

Choolokian said,"He was supposed to sit on this until he explained this to us and not go running to the newspapers to make it look like a done deal."

Two weeks ago, when Piccirillo learned the Reporter had gotten a hold of a confidential memo outlining the program, he asked the Reporter not to publish the story.

Piccirillo told us, in a subsequent interview, that since we called him for comment on the program, he felt he had to get the story out in the Buffalo News on Monday before our paper came out on Tuesday in case the Reporter called it "a dumb idea,” which I did.

Fruscione said he did not believe the Reporter made him do it.

"They knew you guys might write something negative,” Fruscione said. "But think about it. Forbes, ABC, Good Morning America , the Buffalo News. This was staged to rush it through fast."

Mayor Paul Dyster, a supporter of the plan, called a special meeting of the Urban Renewal Agency Board for a vote. The URA’s 10-member board requires six votes to approve the plan. The members are the mayor, the five members of the City Council and four residents of the city, Realtor Mike Hooper, Janet Markarian, businesswoman Doreen O'Conner and Jeff Patterson, a member of the mayor's re-election team. The meeting notice was published under Dyster's name on June 15. Only two items appear on the agenda, approving minutes of the March 12 meeting and the "Housing incentive program vote."

Information concerning the housing incentive program will be forthcoming, the notice ends.

As of 5 p.m., Friday, June 15, no member of the URA board contacted by the Reporter had gotten detailed information on a plan they were expected to vote on Tuesday, June 19.

"I first heard about it when someone called me and told me it was in the news," said board member O'Conner. "Will it work? Let the studies show. I don't think we need to rush. I was told the meeting on Tuesday was informational and not to vote."

"This is definitely not urban renewal," said Fruscione. "I might be in favor of homesteading, where people become invested in the community.”

Council member Glenn Choolokian agreed: "The world is turning. Today, people want more and more dependence on government," he said. "As opposed to people selecting neighborhoods they want to live in, we now have government paying certain people to live in certain neighborhoods. The priority should be to use community development money to knock down abandoned homes.¨