Talked to Niagara Office Building owner, Niagara Aerospace Museum partner and all-around good guy Frank Amendola this week, and he suggested we ought to focus on more upbeat, positive news items for a change.
Maybe he's right. With all the development taking place on Fourth Street, and with the almost weekly announcements of this or that major hotel, entertainment complex or Christmas Wonderland that are just around the corner, things haven't looked better here in years.
Given the city's past, you can't blame the people who still have an "I'll believe it when I see it" attitude, but the signs are good, as the magic eight-ball used to say.
Frank suggested we run nothing but positive stories for a month. That's not going to happen, but we'll give it a try for this one issue.
Congratulations to Niagara Falls Police Det. Frank Coney. With the retirement next month of Capt. James Gray, Coney will become the senior man on the force, and says emphatically he has no plans for retirement.
A tireless homicide detective for the past 33 years, Coney has investigated, and most often solved, uncounted killings here. He viscerally hates the bad guys, has great empathy for the victims and sees his job as one of bringing some sense of closure to the families who have seen their loved ones killed.
And besides that, according to his missus, all he does when he's home anyway is watch true crime shows on Court TV.
Speaking of good cops, Police Chief Chris Carlin has made himself a hero to thousands of block club members -- as well as to the rank and file in both the police and fire departments -- by forcefully speaking out against the slash-and-burn cutbacks in public safety proposed in Mayor Irene Elia's 2003 budget.
Risking the wrath of his boss, Carlin has said in no uncertain terms that the elimination of 13 police officers and 11 positions in the fire department would jeopardize the safety of both the general public and the remaining firefighters and cops here.
Firing Carlin would be a political blunder for Elia, although she has shown in the past that she's not averse to courting disaster.
Carlin would become a martyr, the poster boy around whom the anti-Elia forces would rally during the next election.
Councilwoman Fran Iusi seems to have jumped ship on the mayor, frequently siding with colleagues Vince Anello and Charles Walker on budgetary issues rather than the administration's rubber-stamp council faction of Paul Dyster and Candra Thomason.
Good for her.
Like Walker and Anello, Iusi is particularly concerned with the public safety cuts, and said she believes people would rather see a tax increase greater than the 6.6 percent proposed by the mayor than the closing of two fire stations and police and fire department shifts reduced to what can charitably be called skeletal levels.
With both Iusi and Dyster's council seats up for grabs along with the mayor's office next year, and with Elia's popularity such that she recently couldn't muster a dozen citizens to show up at one of her feel-good town meetings, perhaps Iusi is distancing herself in anticipation of a hard-fought campaign that will almost certainly include familiar names such as Barbara Ann Geracitano, Roger Spurback, Ralph Aversa and Tony Quaranto.
Well, Frank, we made it. A whole column, a whole couple of pages really, with hardly a bad word to say about anyone. It was easier than I thought it would be.
Maybe I should do this more often.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | November 26 2002 |