This past year all I have heard is the reason for Lewiston’s financial woes is that the previous administration spent too much money on Joseph Davis Park, plans for the Recreational Center and its failure to bring revenue into the town and village.

Most of these comments were made by political opponents or misguided taxpayers.

 While uniformed citizens and self-serving politicians blame certain individuals for spending a few hundred thousand dollars in an attempt to rectify the shortage of revenue, the following items may shed a different light on why the town is in a financial predicament.

In the last five years the Arts Council has received over $365,000, the Historical Society $50,000, $150,000 or more went to Art Park and $20,000 to the Jazz Festival. The latter I may add, charges businesses $400 to set up in front of their property and a certain individual takes $30-$40,000 for coordinating the event and frankly has been known to have money left over to invest.

The town, I may add, that needs revenues so badly, has spent upwards of $250,000 and climbing to stop CWM [a hazardous waste facility seeking to expand with DEC/EPA approval] a legally operating business that has contributed to the town’s reserve funds and the town has spent more than $50,000 or more to stop a company from manufacturing and spreading Equate (fertilizer made from human manure) on Lewiston farms.

I also question why Modern Disposal’s tipping fees haven’t been audited when I seem to see more truck traffic and larger trucks on the road and yet we are told that tipping fees have dropped by some $500,000.

A close look at the Village of Lewiston, that has both monetary ties and some reciprocal agreements with the town, reveals they have an outlook which is not much better.

The Village has been partaking of large amounts of Greenway funds. The funds resulted in two memorials costing over $550,000. A Chamber building costing approximately $425,000 to move and renovate and an additional $15-20,000 a year of taxpayer money used for/to assist special interests in the cost of putting on festivals.

We have a 10-year-old hotel in bankruptcy, receivership and disrepair, which, by the way, local politicians favored instead of renovating the famed Frontier House.  We have the Jet Boat in arrears for rent payments to the tune of $60,000 and a number of citizen complaints concerning the boats unheeded, (unlike Youngstown where citizens’ complaints have been addressed.) To top things off, Village officials, from what I hear, sold taxpayers’ riverfront property to a group of individuals for $42,000 including boat slips approximately five years ago and it was just put on the market for sale at $380,000.

And the village has the audacity to ask individuals and businesses to pay for flowers it says it can’t afford. 

With all the millions spent, the town Bond rating was downgraded and a town tax may be on the horizon. Millions of taxpayer funds have been spent in the village and what have we got to show for it?

Higher taxes, higher water bills, a defunct hotel and memorials for kids to play on and used for visitor photo shoots, a landmark hotel in disrepair and an historic chamber building with less storage and a faulty foundation and the landscape on Center Street where the weeds outnumber flowers.

If things do not change, the taxpayer will continue to pay through the nose and have little to show for it and still be left holding the bag.

 

Roger Sherrie Art Pappas - for Mayor of North Tonawanda Mike Pillot makes his third run for mayor Joe Jastrzemski with retiring Wayne Jagow Two Democrats: Niagara Falls Mayor Paul Dyster and County Clerk candidate Jamie Moxham

 

While the public has not been informed of the cost to taxpayers, on Saturday, August 1, Mayor Paul Dyster cut the ribbon at the ceremony for the opening of a new cricket field on Girard Avenue at 61st Street in the LaSalle section of Niagara Falls.

He then proceeded to play an inning himself with members of the Buffalo-Niagara Cricket Club on hand for field-opening festivities.