City Needs Control Board to Stop Spending

Dan Oliverio, Chair of Hodgson Russ, lands big lawsuit for his firm.

The big news out of City Hall is an anticipated $10-million dollar deficit in an $80 million dollar budget. We have a two-word solution for the spendthrifts at City Hall: Control Board.

In fact, Councilman Robert Anderson raised the issue, and it seemed to strike terror in the hearts of the heavy-spending City Administration led by Mayor Paul Dyster.

But really, when you are spending other people’s money, it’s so, so easy to spend and so hard to collect.

Poor Dyster. He floated an idea so typical of the man before the City Council the other day. New York State law prohibits property taxes to be raised more than 2% per year. Dyster privately asked the members of the council if they would join him and write a letter asking Gov. Andrew Cuomo to suspend the law for Niagara Falls so they could raise taxes more than the law allows to cover the deficit.

Council members Sam Fruscione, Glenn Choolokian and Anderson said no. This time, they said, he has to cut spending, not raise taxes.

The letter-to-Cuomo plan was foolish anyway. If Dyster wanted to bridge a $10-million dollar deficit, he’d have to raise taxes by more than 20%, or 10 times what the law allows.

Poor Dyster. He is conflicted. His friends and political allies are part of the patronage team at USA Niagara, and the Niagara Tourism and Convention Corporation. But if those two patronage havens were eliminated from next year’s budget, $4 million would be saved.

That’s better than raising taxes.

Niagara Falls could save yet another million if Dyster and the go-along council stopped giving Hard Rock money and stopped giving campaign contributors, through the Niagara Falls Corporation – a special grant-giving corporation said to help new businesses get started, but where most of the money goes to millionaires.

Half the deficit can be eliminated in an instant.

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The long lingering Lewiston Road project is going out to bid and going to court. Judge Ralph Boniello will decide whether the city can move forward with the work.

With any luck, a competent contractor will be announced and start work soon.

The project was sadly mismanaged. But there was a big winner: Wendel Engineers, who will make more than $4 million in engineering fees on what was originally to be an $8 million road project. That’s a whopping 50 percent in engineering fees – almost unheard of.

When the road dust is settled, and the court testimony is judged, it will likely be revealed that Wendel was the cause of much of the problems. They are named in the lawsuit.

If we had about 500 pages in this edition, I think we could catalogue the errors and omissions on this job, not the least of which was, unlike other cities who have city engineers, Wendel did most of its work, while Dyster fiddled around looking for a city engineer.

Meantime, Wendel charged Niagara Falls to design the mistakes, charged them to inspect their mistakes, and charged again to redesign plans correcting their mistakes.

In any event, Dyster got the council to agree to commence a lawsuit against the contractor, David Pfeiffer of Man O’ Trees, and his bonding company, Hanover Insurance.

This is likely to be a protracted lawsuit. The council agreed to hire Dyster’s favorite Buffalo law firm, Hodgson Russ LLP, who have already made hundreds of thousands of dollars from the city already on various lawsuits. They are Dyster campiagn contributors. It is peculiar how Dyster always hires Buffalo firms. There must be no lawyers in Niagara Falls.

Much like Wendel, who bills by the hour, whether they succeed or not, Hodgson Russ will be billing the taxpayers of Niagara Falls, at $200 plus per hour, on what promises to be thousands of billable hours.

Representing Pfeiffer is a Niagara Falls lawyer, the celebrated litigator John Bartolomei. He will attempt to prove that both Wendel and the city led Pfeiffer down an impossible path. The scope of the construction and/or environmental cleanup project on Lewiston Road was hidden from him.

Bartolomei has already enumerated 111 causes of action which will allow Hodgson Ross to answer all them (at $200+ per hour), and create many more motions in return.

The council approved Dyster’s plunging into this expensive legal battle that will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The results are uncertain. Except for one: the attorneys will get richer.

Extraordinarily, council members told the Reporter that Dyster did not present a memorandum of law as to the likely results or the legal position of this case.

The council approved the lawsuit without knowing the merits or the probable costs. That’s like entering a war without knowing how many troops you have or the strength of your adversary.

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As readers know, $42,000 in taxpayer dollars were given to the billion dollar Hard Rock Café to book a $30,000 dollar vintage (has-been) act called KC and the Sunshine Band.

The concert was rained out.

Apparently Hard Rock is not going to return the $42,000 as required by the contract with the city but claim they will try to schedule KC for a New Year's Concert and guitar drop.

If they can’t get KC, sources at city hall said, they will get another act and try to wangle more money from the City.

If they book another “cheaper” band for New Year's, and claim it is a more expensive band, the city might allow Hard Rock to keep the $42,000 for the KC concert that never happened and put up another $30,000 or more of taxpayer money for the New Year’s act for the “more expensive” act.

The agreement that Hard Rock made with Mayor Dyster does not require Hard Rock to reveal how much they spend or make on each concert.

Expect an act that secretly books for far less than they are paid to book them.

As KC sang so eloquently 35 years ago, the people of Niagara Falls should expect to have their booties shaken quite well.

Booties always shake well when kicked firmly, multiple times, squarely, in tender places.

Keep a lookout for the announcement for the New Years concert, and who will be playing.