Still no sign of Dyster’s disaster budget

Should the first cut be USA Niagara? Chris Schoepflin (above left) is president of USA Niagara, a state agency that gets $2.1 million of the city’s budget annually. Will Dyster (above right) lay off people and raise taxes to keep this patronage playground intact? In the background is a rendering of a USA Niagara project that will include giving away a multi-million dollar parcel of land, owned by the city, to millionaire developer Mark Hamister, and then give him millions more to build a hotel that no one needs. Disaster budgets? We create our own disasters....

Still no word as we go to press from the mayor of Niagara Falls on his expected disaster budget which was due eight days ago but is still under wraps.

City lawmakers and many inside the administration are in the dark on the budget plan because Mayor Paul Dyster is keeping his own counsel, it appears.

When Dyster broke with the charter last week and didn’t present his budget plan on Oct. 1 to the City Council, he said little except that he was still exploring options that were out there to close an estimated $7 million budget hole, caused in part because of lost casino revenue. He wouldn’t elaborate on those options but help from Albany is definitely among them.

What else might be in the proposed budget, especially if there is no help from Albany, is a closely guarded secret at this point, leaving many, including city lawmakers and city tax officials, wondering how they are going to deal with the budget process by Nov. 1 which, under normal circumstances, is the date the council would return the proposed plan to the mayor with their changes.

Under the best of circumstances, it is going to be an 11th-hour dash to find ways to balance the budget and get it ready in time for City Hall to prepare tax bills and implement whatever measures are necessary to get to that point, whether in the form of layoffs (some insiders expect at least 40), tax increases, or cutbacks in some of the expensive contracts the city is carrying, like the $2.1 million of state aid, part of the $17 million the city receives each year, that goes to USA Niagara. How much of that money goes to salaries is a mystery because the state agency has ignored our FOIL request for their financial records. Should USA Niagara collect its $2.1 million if city workers have to be laid off and taxes increased? That’s also among the options that might still be out there, but the mayor isn’t talking.

So for now, it seems everybody is on hold on the budget plan because the mayor, beyond his Monday surprise last week when he showed up at council with no budget, isn’t letting the cat out of the bag, even to city lawmakers who are elected, just like the mayor, to govern the city in the best interests of its residents. That’s a daunting challenge for lawmakers who have not been any part of perhaps the most important responsibility of government, deciding how to raise and spend money.

Maybe the mayor is hoping for a miracle from the state, but there’s no real sign of that happening right now. And his other remedies for the budget ills that are squeezing the city are unknown and will likely be quite unpleasant across the board and require some tough decisions about who is going to bear the pain for closing the gap.

The moment of truth is fast approaching, and city lawmakers and the public may get a first look at a disaster budget right in the eye on Monday if the mayor delivers it at that time as he said he would do last week when he showed up with nothing.
Stay tuned!