Legacy of Rivers’ Holiday Market Continues

(Above and below) Mayor Paul Dyster’s masterpiece the Niagara Holiday Market, a $450,000 taxpayer funded boondoggle that looked like hell and attracted almost no one.

On Niagara St., the last of the shacks for Mark Rivers' taxpayer-funded Holiday Market are in full view.

Only they look far better at a small market place in front of the Niagara Hub then they ever did at the Holiday Market.

Maybe that's because these vendors aren’t taxpayer subsidized.

So they have to make it on their own.

Back in 2011, when Mayor Paul Dyster was running for re-election, he decided to pitch $450,000 into a trash can called the Niagara Holiday Market and more than $100,000 of it went to building about 30 shacks for vendors - who for the most part were actually shills for Rivers.

Not there to conduct business but to make a show of it so Rivers could collect the near half-a-million he collected.

The market was a total flop.

Afterwards most of the shacks were sold for about $100 apiece through an online auction. One was kept for a smokers' lounge behind the DPW yard.

The rest are being used now to host a small outdoor market, which actually is far nicer than the taxpayer subsidized Holiday Market that Dyster and Rivers foisted on us.

The last remaining Holiday Market shacks now form a small farmers style market on Niagara St. Funny this small group of vendors without taxpayer funding fixed up their sheds better and made their operation nicer than the ugly wasteful Holiday Market. Funny what free enterprise can do when it is not enabled with the theft of the public’s money. Mark Rivers made his money off the subsidies, not the business he could develop.

Above: A typical Holiday Market shack. Below, these same shacks improved by free enterprise. Remember these pictures if you want an illustration between public subsidies and free enterprise...