Beverly Hills and Niagara Falls reverse roles in use of CD Money

Will Beverly HIlls come up with a creative plan like Niagara Falls and start paying people to live there?

Niagara Falls, New York is one of the poorest and least self-confident towns in America.

But they came up with a novel idea this year. This year, as a sign of our utter foolishness, its mayor, Paul Dyster and his Community Development Director Seth Piccirillo, came up with the most spectacularly lame-brained scheme in recent memory: Pay college graduates to live here.

The plan is to spend $200,000 of Federal Community Development Block Grant (CBDBG) money to get 20 students to come here for two years.

$61,000 of the money will be lost in overhead and the rest will go to students, if any are willing to come.

Beverly Hills, on the other hand, does not pay people to move there. In fact, people have to pay to live in what is possibly the most expensive real estate in the world. They too had an idea.

This year, Beverly Hills and the city of Santa Fe Springs will sell $206,426 of their CDBG dollars to other cities, in exchange for $145,662 in general revenue. By selling the block grant for less than it is worth, states and cities free themselves of the program’s requirements.

Since Niagara Falls waste in their pay college grads to live there program is about equal to what Beverly Hills is discounting, why not use the money to pay the Mayor and Piccirillo to move to Beverly Hills?

Niagara Falls can then keep the rest of the money and go back to letting people pay to live in our city, just like everywhere else in the entire world.

In both cities’ cases it is taxpayer waste.

Americans generally do not consider Beverly Hills an impoverished town, yet the city has been accumulating CDBG funds for years without spending the money. They are making money off a program intended for the poor and getting around federal requirements to fund projects for low-income residents by selling federal antipoverty grants to other communities. Beverly Hills received $180,307 in CDBG funds this year. It now has a balance of unspent funds near $675,000.

Niagara Falls on the other hand ought not to be poor with its tourism and hydro power. It has gotten millions from CDBG and keeps getting poorer.

Maybe it’s time to think a little more like the people of Beverly Hills, close the CD department and discount the CDBG money. The discounted figure the city could get would probably be greater than the money they net now after excessive overhead.