Hard Rock May Inflate New Year's Eve Bash

Taxpayers are privileged to enjoy Mayor Paul Dyster on stage at every Hard Rock event.

Taxpayers would have gotten a full load of fun, when they paid Hard Rock $42,000 to bring KC and his booty-shaking act (above) to town, but, sadly, rain forced cancellation of the high-spirited taxpayer-sponsored fun.

Disaster budget? What disaster...?

We have money enough for a $50,000-plus Hard Rock New Year's Eve concert and guitar drop.

Word from City Hall, however, is that the Hard Rock Cafe, Inc., will not return the $42,000 it received from Niagara Falls taxpayers to bring KC and the Sunshine Band here for an outdoor concert performance that was rained out in August - even though its contract with the city requires Hard Rock to return the money for concerts they get paid to stage and promote but do not deliver.

The Reporter suggests that Hard Rock did not have rain insurance and therefore they still had to pay KC, using taxpayer money, because, even though the band did not play, they did show up.

The promoter is supposed to carry rain insurance to protect against such acts of nature.

As the Reporter earlier indicated, Hard Rock management, combined with super-cooperative city officials, will ultimately agree that the $42,000 taxpayers lost on the KC concert that never was, will be rolled into the New Year's Eve bash, rather than returned to the people.

And so it is...

Now here is where it might get a little sleazy.

The Hard Rock people, as predicted by this publication, may be looking to raise the cost of the New Year's bash from $50,000 to as much as $90,000 to hide the $42,000 that they already collected for KC, and spent.

Word is they will try to snow the city into raising the cost of the New Year’s event, not only by saying they are getting a more expensive band to play, but by a plan to have the guitar drop from either Carl Paladino’s Giacomo Hotel or from the Seneca Hotel and this, we predict, Hard Rock officials will claim, will make the event much more gala and world class and will cost (surprise) $42,000 more.

Get the picture?

By inflating costs for the guitar drop, Hard Rock can inflate costs and charge the city more money and, ultimately, Hard Rock can hide some or most of the KC money they blew in August with the new ball drop and enhanced event.

We hope the council will not support any increases.

Rather, they should demand Hard Rock return the money they took from taxpayers to stage KC and, since we are threatening to lay off people, and raise taxes in this city; frankly, the council and the mayor should consider canceling the New Year’s Eve event.

It could save one job.

Imagine a city so depraved that its officials, drunk in their VIP tent, partying into the night, with taxpayer money - regale themselves, while someone, some real person, someone with a family to support, his or her job might have been saved with that money, but instead it is used for a concert.

Somehow, Niagara Falls Mayor Paul Dyster entered into an agreement with Hard Rock where they have gotten some $700,000 of public money during the last few years and they do not have to account to the people for a single dime of it.

The Reporter broke the story earlier this year of how Hard Rock actually pays the various acts far less than what they get from the taxpayers to stage these concerts. For example, while Hard Rock received $42,000 to book KC, they paid the band $30,000, according to an agent associated with KC.

Why doesn’t Hard Rock return the taxpayer’s $42,000, as required in their contract? Will they play games so they can keep the money?

How will they hide it from the public? Will the mayor and certain members of the council aid the Hard Rock in this?

Sure, we understand. The mayor and members of the council enjoy picking the acts, and are known to bring their friends and sycophants with them, seated, as they are, in their free, VIP seating, under the VIP tent, and they get to meet the stars backstage, and sometimes, perchance, share a drink or two with them. It is an exciting brush with greatness.

Indeed the lead singer of one of the acts, Sugar Ray, told the audience that Niagara Falls was a great place, explaining “where else can you go where the mayor of the city comes backstage and does shots with you?”
  
Only Council Member Glenn Choolokian boycotts these events on the belief that taxpayers should not be funding entertainment events.

Even if the city was not facing a disaster budget, the Niagara Falls Reporter does not believe it is a function of government to entertain the governed, or pay for concerts for billion dollar corporations like the Hard Rock Cafe Inc., which, by the way, gets the lucrative concession rights while taxpayers foot the bill for the acts.  Let the Hard Rock pay for the acts and we would have no problem.

Why is the Reporter the only one reporting on this issue and demanding an accounting of the $42,000 now missing for more than two months?