You don't get too many second chances to do the right things, especially in politics.
The Niagara Falls City Council has just such an opportunity waiting for it at its next meeting on Feb. 7.
That's when Councilman Lewis "Babe" Rotella will offer a resolution asking State Supreme Court Justice Vincent Doyle to toss out the poorly written, hastily passed deal between Mayor Vincenzo V. Anello's City Hall and Greater Niagara Sports that cedes an ever-expanding portion of the Hyde Park Golf Course to an alleged developer with no history of developing anything. In return, the city is guaranteed just about nothing.
Rotella tried to "walk on" the resolution at the Jan. 24 meeting, but such a maneuver requires unanimous agreement among the body's five members. Council Chairman Charles Walker voted against the late addition to the agenda, as did Candra Thomason.
Doyle ruled earlier this month that a citizen's group, Save Hyde Park, did not have legal standing to ask him to snuff the deal. He did, however, leave the door open for the Council to do just that, since his predecessor on the case, Justice Richard Kloch, had voided a key portion of the deal, substantially changing the terms that received 3-2 approval from the city's legislators last May. The so-called "Phase IV" would have allowed GNS to lease city land adjacent to the golf courses for up to 30 years and build a "mid-sized, full service motel" on the parcel.
Citycide assumes the nays resulted from concerns about rushing to a vote on such an important matter. Not that fear of premature legislation stopped the Council from rushing to approve the Hyde Park Golf Course Giveaway in the first place, pushed along by breathless urging from well-paid lobbyists and the administration itself.
We'll give the dissenting Council members the benefit of the doubt on this one, since such reasonable public servants couldn't possibly still think the whole mess does anything to benefit the taxpayers they represent.
Rotella, Bob Anderson and Glenn Choolokian constitute a three-vote majority able to pass the resolution. A 4-1 or 5-0 vote, though, would go along way toward forcing Anello, who does not have veto power, to act on the resolution, something past mayors have sometimes put off as long as possible.
Of course, Doyle could decide not to negate the contract. But given his dismay at the poorly worded contract during the December hearing -- "Who wrote this?" the judge wondered aloud at one point -- he seems poised to throw the whole thing out if asked.
Since our august representatives have other pressing issues on their minds and agendas -- like avoiding the humiliation of closing the city's libraries -- Citycide offers this brief primer on why they should vote to ask Doyle to save Hyde Park.
1. It's a crummy deal.
Even Anello's own administration sounded embarrassed while trying to defend the agreement during a December hearing before Doyle.
"Is this the best deal the city could have gotten?" Corporation Counsel Ron Anton asked rhetorically, before admitting the answer. "No one is arguing that."
During the same hearing, City Administrator Dan Bristol -- the administration's lead negotiator during talks with GNS -- conceded he struck a deal aimed at improving the take from use of Hyde Park's courses without knowing how much the city charges its golfers. He also admitted the deal's various vagaries and loopholes -- the developers' investors and creditors get paid before the city sees one dollar -- could mean a deal tying up hundreds of acres of city-owned land for decades could ultimately yield the city zilch.
"Isn't it conceivable that the debt service and leasehold improvements could be so large that they would reduce the city's share to zero?" attorney Ned Perlman, representing Save Hyde Park co-founder Frank Scaletta, asked Bristol.
"Is it conceivable? Yes," Bristol said.
Testimony during the hearing also showed that GNS plans to combine the two nine-hole courses into a single 18-hole facility. This, even though all but one of the two dozen leagues that play Hyde Park every week compete over nine holes, as do hundreds of golfers who hit the links after work or don't want to trudge a full 18.
Not that GNS didn't figure those good folks into their scheme.
"People can play nine holes if they want, (or) they can play 12 holes if they want," GNS General Manager Larry Griffiths testified during the December hearing.
It's just that they'll have to pay for 18.
2. It's not the same crummy deal you voted for in May.
By severing Phase IV, Judge Kloch tossed out one of the few "benefits" to the people of Niagara Falls -- a new motel to symbolize City Hall's encouragement of "economic development."
Forget about the feasibility of building a motel where no one else would think to bother, or the wisdom of putting it on city-owned land. During the December hearing, Anton and Bristol repeatedly cited a need to show developers that City Hall has a new attitude toward people who want to do business in Niagara Falls.
Judging from the agreement struck with GNS, that attitude is remarkably similar to the one presented by the women who stroll some of the city's less well-lit streets very late at night -- pay up, and anything goes.
Unlike City Hall, though, those entrepreneurs generally insist on getting paid, rather than settling for vague, unenforceable promises.
Whatever your definition of economic development, the "mid-sized, full-service motel" was about the only benefit of any sort to the city in a contract full of concessions.
And now it's gone.
3. You got snookered the first time around.
In May, GNS officials trotted underprivileged kids and developmentally disabled adults before the Council, insisting that they and only they could administer a program called The First Tee, which introduces people to the game who might otherwise be unable to get on a course.
GNS and City Hall also insisted that time was of the essence. If the Council didn't declare the giveaway to be "in the best interests of the city" in order to bypass the open bidding process required by state law, they claimed, the less fortunate might never get to yell "fore."
The alleged developers and city officials also played up the money supposedly being lost at Hyde Park, and the riches GNS would supposedly pour into city coffers. Perlman effectively put the lie to both assertions during December's hearings. He showed that the city actually makes money at the Hyde Park courses.
Testimony at the hearing showed that claimed losses resulted from a bookkeeping system dictated by former Public Works Commissioner Paul Colangelo. That ledger included the full salaries of people who work at the course for six months or less each year, as well as debt service the city has to pay no matter who runs the golf operation.
The exploitation and deception worked last time. Now, GNS is hinting that it will sue the city if it doesn't get it's way. "Hinting" is the key word here, since if Doyle voids the deal, the "developers" can't sue the city over his decision, and they know it.
4. You're supposed to represent the taxpayers.
Stewart paid for his vote to approve the deal with his job, getting trounced in last September's Democratic Primary by Glenn Choolokian, a political newcomer who made the golf course issue the centerpiece of his campaign.
Other than GNS stakeholders who stand to gain hugely from the sweetheart deal, the people they paid to push the deal and city officials who don't want to admit they screwed up, supporters of the deal are a pretty rare breed.
There's more at stake here than control of the golf course. City-owned land belongs to the citizens of Niagara Falls, not its elected officials and their appointees and friends.
State law outlines a very clear process for the sale or lease of public land. You put it out a request for proposals and pick the best one.
Anello's administration did neither. They let GNS sneak in through the backdoor, parlaying the failure of the former Adelphia Golf Dome's previous owners into an exclusive deal to not only get existing debts forgiven, but grab control of prime real estate they never could have afforded under normal circumstances.
Given the efforts by GNS and City Hall to blur the numbers and the law, you can't really blame Walker, Thomason and Stewart for their initial votes to approve the deal.
But given what happened to Stewart last September, you can guess the fate of Walker and Thomason -- both of whom are up for re-election in the fall -- if they ignore the will of the people and let themselves get fooled again.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Feb. 1 2005 |