Unlike many of his predecessors, Niagara Falls Mayor Paul Dyster hasn't been much for launching major capitol improvement projects. His 52 months in office have been characterized far more by grandiose plans than by bricks-and-mortar accomplishment.
In fact, a child born on the day Dyster was first elected would now be getting ready to enter kindergarten without having seen a major construction or demolition project of any sort come to fruition here. And that includes the only one attempted by the mayor, the ill-starred reconstruction of Lewiston Road in the city's DeVeaux neighborhood.
The Lewiston Road project was seen as crucial by Dyster and city Planning Director Tom DeSantis, since both men are strong backers of the proposal to remove the Robert Moses Parkway and reroute northbound and southbound traffic down Main Street in the city's core.
Despite the fact that the state of New York has shown no inclination whatsoever to tear out a perfectly good section of roadway in order to placate small fringe groups of environmental activists and downtown Niagara Falls boosters, Dyster and DeSantis figured they'd just go ahead and get the new route ready for the heavy traffic they were sure would come.
It had been known for years that lurking underneath the road surface lie a potential ecological disaster in the form of tons of radioactive slag, a byproduct of the Manhattan Project and other atomic weapons programs carried out by the federal government in Niagara Falls during the 1940s and 1950s.
Using the slag to stabilize the roadway bed seemed like a good idea at the time, since the hazardous waste would be sealed by the poured concrete of the road's surface.
Although the possibly deadly radioactive contamination associated with the slag had been known about for decades and well documented, it was underplayed in the job specifications prepared under the direction of Dyster and DeSantis as the reconstruction project moved forward.
City sources told the Niagara Falls Reporter that the project was ready to be put out for bid in the spring of 2008, only a few months after Dyster took office. But there was one little problem.
The city had been without an engineer since Jan. 1, 2008, when Dyster fired the highly competent Bob Curtis in his first official act as mayor.
And since no engineer with any knowledge of the dangers lurking beneath Lewiston Road would sign off on the reconstruction plan as it was written, and no competent engineer brought in from the outside would approve it without completely familiarizing himself with the severity of the problem, Dyster and DeSantis faced a conundrum.
Clearly, they needed a city engineer whose qualifications were so dismal, whose grasp of professional standards and practices was so lacking, and whose ethical code was so absent that he would basically do whatever he was told.
Dyster announced he would be launching a nationwide search to find a replacement for Curtis, saying he would comb the countryside in an unprecedented effort to come up with the "best and the brightest" city engineer money could buy.
Enter Ali Marzban.
Marzban had never been a city engineer before, and in fact, at the time of his hiring by Dyster wasn't licensed to practice engineering anywhere in the entire United States. He was brought on board on Dec. 30, 2008. His salary was pegged at $93,341, about $25,000 more than Curtis -- who did have a valid New York engineering license -- had been making.
"Ali brings a broad range of experience to the job," Dyster told reporters at the time. "We have solid people in place already in our engineering department, but we were looking for someone to come in an be a team leader who had some senior experience."
January and February of 2009 came and went with no sign of Marzban, even though he was on the city's payroll. Dyster told reporters his new engineer was having problems finding suitable housing in the city, despite a vacancy rate of more than 30 percent.
Marzban started work on March 30, 2009, and the Lewiston Road reconstruction project was the top priority. When it was presented to the City Council less than two months after Marzban's first day on the job, Dyster and DeSantis were beaming.
"This is the first federal aid project that's been approved (for Niagara Falls) in 10 years," DeSantis said gleefully.
"I think our track record is starting to speak for itself," Dyster told reporters. "We promised we would get Lewiston Road done and we're moving forward."
But Marzban's salad days were not to last. Less than two months after he signed off on the Lewiston Road project, the Niagara Falls Reporter launched an investigation into Marzban's background, an investigation some said should have been performed by the city prior to his hiring to such an important position.
Dyster finally got around to firing him in August, but the damage was done. Marzban's illegal signature on the Dyster-DeSantis plan for the reconstruction of Lewiston Road was all that had been needed to get the federal and state dollars flowing and to allow the city to put the job out to bid.
The low bidder was Man O' Trees Inc., a West Seneca-based contractor that had considerable experience in road reconstruction working for the New York Department of Transportation, the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority, the Niagara River Greenway Commission and other government agencies.
As is often the case, the company has had considerable success everywhere it's undertaken a project, except for Niagara Falls. The incredibly high levels of radioactive contamination, which were grossly understated in the bid documents, added time and money to the undertaking.
The Lewiston Road project was supposed to have cost $7.7 million and taken 24 months to complete. Today, 35 months after the project went out to bid, costs have risen to more than $12 million, and the project is not halfway complete.
Man O' Trees owner Dave Pfeiffer says the city is broke and past due on several invoices he's submitted for work already completed on the project. At the end of the day, the project will have cost the city between $15 million and $19 million, he said.
For his part, Dyster told the press last week that he has recently become concerned about "the timely completion of the project," and has written a letter to that effect.
And the last anyone heard of Ali Marzban -- the best and the brightest city engineer Dyster could find in the whole United States following a search that lasted more than a year -- he was living on public assistance in a Buffalo housing project.
It's enough to make you wonder.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | April 10 2012 |