Councilwoman Kristin Grandinetti is a gal who wants it all. In a May 29 commentary published in the Niagara Gazette, she criticizes City Council Chairman Sam Fruscione and Councilmen Bob Anderson and Glenn Choolokian on the grounds they are using their opposition to Mayor Paul Dyster’s inept efforts to get the Seneca Nation of Indians to pay their fair share of casino revenues to the city as “a soapbox to gain media attention.”

Likewise, the council majority’s criticism of the money sucking Holiday Market Dyster promoted will “chase away interested developers and stall progress downtown,” and the fact that they’ve supported Nik Wallenda’s high wire walk across the falls while Dyster has opposed it and the millions of dollars in revenue it will bring in to the “embarrassing the mayor and his administration, even if it makes the city look bad.” In other words, any criticism of Dyster – her neighbor on Orchard Parkway and the architect of her election campaign – is bad for the city, whether he mishandled an issue or not.

For all intents and purposes, Dyster has done absolutely nothing in the past three years to indicate he even believes that the Senecas withholding $66 million in local revenue owed to the city for hosting the casino is a problem. When asked, he has said he believes Gov. Andrew Cuomo is doing a heck of a job resolving the issue.

“The city should be speaking with one voice – and that voice is Dyster’s voice of reason,” Grandinetti wrote.

If the definition of insanity is doing something that hasn’t worked over and over again and expecting a different result, Grandinetti is certifiable.

But just how wide is this yawning chasm that is so divisive she felt the need to lash out against her colleagues in the pages of the local newspaper? Since Grandinetti is little more than a rubber stamp for the mayor, how often have she and Fruscione locked horns in mortal combat over whether or not to toe the Dyster line?

Between January 2010, when Grandinetti was sworn in as a council member, and May 29 of this year, she has voted on 1,148 resolutions. And she voted precisely the same as Fruscione 1,126 times.

In other words, she and Fruscione parted ways enough to vote differently on something on just 22 occasions, or less than 2 percent of the time.

Quite frankly, that doesn’t seem like a particularly high degree of political conflict. Perhaps it just seems worse than it is to Grandinetti, whose feminine sensitivity may make her somewhat touchy from time to time.

In the Gazette, she often comes across as a woman scorned. “I am persona non grata on the city council,” she whines. “I am sure I will ‘pay’ for my comments but someone needs to tell the full truth about what the council majority is up to.”

The full truth is that the council majority – Sam Fruscione, Bob Anderson and Glenn Choolokian – are acting as the loyal opposition to a mayor whose out of control hubris has turned Lewiston Road into an ongoing disaster, managed to lose a quarter million of your dollars sponsoring a Holiday Market no one was interested in attending and opposed the Wallenda wire walk, which will be the biggest event to occur in Niagara Falls in a century.

He has positioned himself on the wrong side of nearly every issue that’s come before him, all the while hiding behind the skirts of Grandinetti.

If Grandinetti cannot stand a 1.9 percent disagreement rate and requires Fruscione and the council majority have to agree with the mayor 100 percent of the time, as she does, what is the use of having a council anyway? She should not be an elected council member but should instead be a paid member of the mayor's staff.

(Grandinetti did not return a call seeking comment).