CROWD ESTIMATES PIE IN THE SKY AT MARKET

A typical crowd of about 20 people at last year's Holiday Market.	Scanty crowd at the Holiday Market. Do you suppose they didn't count on purpose?

A developer comes to town and says "I can develop a Holiday Market and bring 250,000 visitors, flooding downtown with people not normally known to come to town this time of year."

The mayor says that sounds great. Based on that let’s give you $450,000 of public money.

Then they make a contract that reflects that 250,000 people will come to the market and becuase of that the city will get back much of the money it invested.

The contract is signed. The project is done. But there is no mechanism in place to monitor attendance. No tickets, no official to count heads, no hand ticker, no turnstile.

Not even anybody writing down in a notebook.

When it is all over, the final report says maybe 75,000 people came, but we have no way of verifying that number because nobody counted.

Who does business this way?

The city of Niagara Falls and USA Niagara, that’s who.

And they do it this way because it is not their money – but your money.

The city will take your house away - sell it in foreclosure for not paying your property taxes. Then they will spend public money on a Holiday Market.

While they know how much of your money was spent to the dime – they cannot tell you how many people attended the Holiday Market.

So who, I mean really, who does business this way?