Taxpayers to Foot Bill for Dyster's New Year's Eve Hard Rock Gala

Mayor Paul Dyster, like the artist formerly known as Prince, wants to party like it’s 1999. The only problem is it’s 2014.

Mayor Paul Dyster wants to give the Hard Rock Cafe of Niagara Falls $27,000 in taxpayer cash so the multi-billion dollar corporation owned by the Seminole Indian Nation – not to be confused with the Seneca Nation of Indians that own 52 prime acres of land in the city's downtown – can hold and profit from a "New Year's Eve Guitar Drop" at their restaurant.

The mayor's resolution to approve this cash award was item 3 on Monday night's (Dec, 8) council agenda. And while it was not approved by the council - Andrew Touma, Glenn Choolokian and Robert Anderson were set to oppose and so Dyster pulled the resolution - it does reveal how Dyster approaches the public's money.

Yes, as city residents struggle to understand why the city has a $9 million deficit in spite of the casino cash windfall, Dyster wants to hand over city dollars to the famously profitable Hard Rock Corporation.

While the average home income in Niagara Fall is under $25,000 and while up to 60 percent of the residents have a need for social assistance, and as Dyster works to inflict large tax increases upon both home and business owners, the mayor is planning to set up what amounts to a private year-end celebration for friends and campaign supporters.

Shocking is too weak a word to describe the mayor's request of the council.

Disgusting, insensitive and totally lacking in any appreciation of the pain the city residents are suffering is more fitting.

After Dyster and his administration have worked overtime (pun intended) for the past four months to scare the living hell out of the residents with horror stories of deficits and financial disaster, the mayor and his gang of bureaucratic scoundrels are right back at it - as we predicted they would be - spending money, handing out stipends and overtime and literally living the high life at everyone else's expense.

The mayor, his controller and his enablers on the council will claim that the gift of $27,000 to the Hard Rock "isn't taxpayer money, it comes from the bed tax account."

While Nero (above) fiddled while Rome burned, Mayor Dyster (R) does not play any instruments. So he uses taxpayer money to hire has-been acts to play, while the Mayor parties - sometimes back stage with the acts themselves - on the free beer - and sometimes harder liquor.

To this we suggest you ask NTCC head John Percy if "bed tax" funds are real dollars or just Monopoly money because Percy gladly and greedily accepts close to $1 million per year of bed tax receipts from the city.

We have previously written about this at great length, explaining that if funds come to the city from taxes, sales tax, bed tax, grants, federal or state appropriation or ANY other source it is ALL taxpayer money. Period.

Money coming into the city is not defined by where it comes from. Instead the funds are defined as becoming taxpayer dollars once received into the city government. Period.

And yet Dyster, his administration, and his enablers on the council assist him in perpetuating this shameful charade of what is and what isn't taxpayer money.

The genuinely unethical and deeply disturbing sing-song of the Dyster administration that, "we can spend this money any way we want and you can't stop us because it's not taxpayer cash so it's none of your business" must be ended.

Mayor Dyster, after having misrepresented the 2015 budget crisis and after having dropped a large tax increase on the residents now wanted to throw a big, fun-filled, New Year's Eve party for himself and his supporters at taxpayer expense. Just a little too much for even his friends on the council.

Let the good times roll. Dyster, who said we have to share the pain of lean times, and will be raising taxes, wanted to blow $27,000 on a Hard Rock Party... Is the Niagara Falls Reporter the only one that sees the blatant hypocrisy of this?