With friends like Seneca and Albany, who needs enemies?

Let’s face it, the Senecas have been lousy neighbors to those of us who live, work and pay taxes in the City of Niagara Falls. They suck up city services, police and fire protection, making demands on water and sewer infrastructure and on our streets and roads.

Niagara Falls is due the bulk of $70 million in payments it owes to local communities hosting casinos, with lesser amounts going to Salamanca and Buffalo.

The tribe stopped payments after 2009 due to a real or imagined dispute the state, and the amount due has been piling up ever since. The result in Niagara Falls has been that essential city services – like the demolition of abandoned buildings – have been slashed to the bone, along with money earmarked to services at Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center, the Niagara Falls City School District and Niagara Falls International Airport.

And where has Mayor Paul Dyster been as this disaster has unfolded in the city he allegedly leads?

Missing in action, that’s where. Over and over again he has said he trusts in Cuomo to take care of the problem, despite Cuomo’s demonstrated inability to do so. He is backed by a rubber stamp City Council minority consisting of Councilman Charles Walker and Councilwoman Kristin Grandinetti, and nobody else.

Cuomo’s plan is that seven private casinos would all be located in the eastern part of the state, where they would be able to draw on customers from Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey and the Philadelphia areas. The potential take for the state and the host communities there would be in the billions of dollars, far more than the chump change then-City Councilman Dyster and former mayor Irene Elia signed off on in 2001.

Make no mistake, Dyster dummied up when the city agreed to the ridiculously bad deal back then, in much the same way he’s maintaining a quiet and clueless stance right now.

The governor will never forgive voters in Erie and Niagara counties for the overwhelming mandate they gave Buffalo developer Carl Paladino when he ran against Cuomo in 2010.

No matter how hard Dyster sucks up to him, Cuomo isn’t going to do favors for Niagara Falls, not when his loyal friends in Queens, Long Island and Westchester have so much to gain.

In those places, the developer with the most attractive casino proposal will get the deal, whether they’re red, white, brown, black or yellow.

But here, only the Indians will be allowed to continue to oversee the most lucrative industry the region has.

A self-serving governor, a gutless mayor and a state Legislature staring bankruptcy in the face will combine to form a perfect storm, one which will have a devastating impact on the Niagara Frontier.

And as has been the case for decades now, the rich of New York City and Albany will get richer, while the poor of Niagara Falls and Buffalo will once again get kicked in the teeth.

Is New York Gov. Cuomo getting ready to send the residents of Niagara Falls, Buffalo and all of Western New York out on their own “Trail of Tears,” pushing through legalized gambling for the rest of the state while forcing us to remain in the ghetto of Indian gaming?