Why in the world is the Niagara Fine Arts Program being put in charge of this year's Memorial Day parade and the ceremony honoring our war dead? More to the point, why is the city attempting to give the arts group five grand of taxpayer money that goes with being in charge of the events?
The city had no Memorial Day parade until 2005, when veterans groups banded together to put one on themselves. They founded the Memorial Day Parade Association to ensure that the city's fallen heroes would at least receive recognition once a year in their hometown.
Between 2005 and 2008, the city magnanimously chipped in $3,000 -- not per year, but all together -- to help subsidize the event, with the lion's share of the cost covered by the veterans.
The clueless Niagara Falls City Council was prepared to vote to give the arts people the money last week, without apparently even knowing how the event is organized. What they did have was a recommendation from Mayor Paul Dyster, something that Council Chairman and administration lackey Chris Robins put a high priority on.
Cindy Stonebreaker, head of the parade association, wasn't informed that the parade funding would be turned over to a group whose tastes run more to Philip Glass than John Philip Sousa.
"We are the association, we are the organizers of this parade," she told the Council. "I'm nauseated. If I could only tell you what we could've done with $5,000."
Stonebreaker pointed out that the parade and ceremony have traditionally been volunteer affairs.
"Why should they get paid when everyone else are volunteers?" she said. "That $5,000 should be going to the parade committee where it belongs."
At that point, Robins -- who will need every vote he can get during his November bid for re-election -- tabled the resolution for further discussion. What he and Dyster will discuss is uncertain. Since neither man served a day in the U.S. military, you can bet they won't be swapping war stories.
Next Monday, Feb. 23, I'll be at the Barton Hill Hotel in Lewiston at 6:30 p.m. to talk about my book "Mob Boss" in front of the Lewiston Historical Society. I mention this only because the Niagara Gazette, in its editorial wisdom, has seen fit to refuse to publish notice of the event because it involves me, a position that has members of the august society chuckling.
The Gazette did the same thing to the good folks at the Lewiston Garden Club, the Kiwanis Club of Niagara Falls, the Northtowns Animal Shelter and other charitable community groups that have had the temerity to invite me to one of their events. It is comical, petty and bush league, three adjectives that apply to most everything the Gazette has or hasn't done in recent years.
The thought of someone writing something other than obituaries and police blotter items that people actually are interested in reading apparently bothers Gazette management quite a bit.
The upside for the historical society is the knowledge that, one day soon, the Gazette will take its place next to the prehistoric pottery, horse-drawn carriages and other artifacts housed in their museum's collection dedicated to days gone by.
And speaking of troubled local daily newspapers, the Buffalo News has put a buyout offer on the table, and some of their longtime top writers are getting out while the getting is good.
The News actually managed to lose money in December, traditionally a big money month in the newspaper industry because of the holiday sales.
Relentless increases in the costs associated with employee health care and newsprint, along with the insanely high tax rates levied on businesses unfortunate enough to be located in the Empire State, have made turning a profit into something of an impossible dream, even for papers as venerable as The New York Times, the Daily News, the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal.
Those papers at least have the advantage of being owned by newspapermen. I seriously doubt that Warren Buffett will continue to back the money-losing News the way that Rupert Murdoch seems happy to do with the Post.
Well, it finally happened. Last week, Mayor Dyster finally came to the conclusion that 10th Street is nearly impassable, something that any of the hundreds of people who have had their tires flattened, ball joints busted or axles snapped on the cratered roadway could have told him a long time ago.
In fact, I did tell him, in a column that came out around this time last year, after the Redhead drove the family jalopy into a hole that could have been made by a 155-millimeter mobile field artillery piece and emerged with a flat, one of four that the city gifted us with during the spring months.
The television news stations were apparently so awed by the fact that Dyster realized the obvious they all sent camera crews and impeccably coiffed television stars up over the Grand Island Bridge to take his picture and ask him what he planned to do about it.
In his own "can do" fashion, Dyster advised city residents not to drive on the street unless it was absolutely necessary, which -- because Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center is located on it -- it often is.
Only in Niagara Falls, kids. Only in Niagara Falls.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | February 17 2009 |