It only took more than 18 months, but City Hall officials finally figured out what had long been painfully obvious to just about everyone else in Niagara Falls: The Great Hyde Park Golf Course Giveaway was about as crummy a deal as a government could make.
Presumably on the orders of Mayor Vincenzo V. Anello, city attorneys filed suit against Greater Niagara Sports last week, seeking to void the contract giving it control of a steadily expanding portion of the city-owned golf course. Good for them.
The reversal by Anello's administration, which negotiated the deal in the first place, then helped bamboozle City Council into approving the debacle by a 3-2 margin in May 2004, was a welcome, if long overdue, burst of common sense triggered by the utter failure of GNS to live up to even the most basic of its contractual requirements. Most notably, the group neither invested the required $350,000 in the nine holes it was supposed to improve in 2005, nor paid the $150,000 developer's fee.
In defense of GNS, its attorneys could argue it didn't owe the latter, since it never really intended to "develop" anything.
While the filing doubtless signals the disintegration of the shadowy relationship between the administration and the alleged developer, it shouldn't mean the end of the lawsuit. Taxpayers' group Save Hyde Park's case, while focused on the golf course gifting, is really about a much bigger issue.
While most of the issues involved in the original suit have been settled, Save Hyde Park's appeal, scheduled to be heard by the state Appellate Court in Rochester in late February, deals with whether or not the city can dispense with an open bidding process whenever it pleases.
State law dictates that any alienation of public land requires the municipality in question to advertise the availability of such property and select the best offer from the bids that ensue. The process also allows taxpayers to voice their feelings on the deal before it gets made.
The city charter of Niagara Falls says much the same thing, with a loophole the size of the gorge carved by the famous cataracts. If the mayor and Council agree that a backroom deal like the one struck with GNS is somehow "in the best interests of the city," they can dispense with the bidding process.
Before turning the case over to another judge, state Supreme Court Justice Richard Kloch ruled that the charter took precedence, in effect because both laws were more than 80 years old and no one had ever complained before.
That's exactly why it's so important that the question be put to the Appellate branch. If local officials can avoid public scrutiny by invoking the "best interests" clause, there's no limit to what they can give away to their cronies.
The Hyde Park mess points up precisely why public bidding is so important.
For one thing, it serves as prequalification for would-be developers. They have to show that not only do they want a piece of property, but that they're qualified to do what they promise once they have it.
Thanks to the charter's loophole, the principals of GNS never had to show any experience running a golf course, or that they had sufficient resources to do so, or even who they were.
The answers to those questions -- none, obviously not, and we still don't know.
As a result, all of Hyde Park is in worse shape than it was before GNS arrived to "save" it.
With GNS failing to perform even basic maintenance, the city wound up expending its scant resources mowing grass it wasn't supposed to have to worry about.
The overall shabbiness of the courses, along with the season-long closure of the GNS-controlled driving range, led to a drop in revenues during what should have been a great summer for golfing.
That the deal wasn't in anyone's best interests couldn't be more visible. Weeds shot up through the artificial turf covering the driving range and dandelions coated the fairways the company was supposedly improving, while the greens steadily rotted.
The most embarrassing sight to everyone involved is the flattened rubber of the golf dome, which has been providing an eyesore to motorists on Porter Road since an April snowstorm deflated it. The dome, you might recall, was the irreplaceable civic treasure GNS vowed to save from foreclosure, a calamity which left Anello and friends with no choice but to invoke the "best interests" clause.
Of course, there have been many such "emergencies" in recent city history, leading to no-bid deals on both pedestrian malls connecting the state park to downtown and the alienation of other city-owned properties.
Advocates of such deals usually offer a simple argument in favor of such backroom shenanigans and the wonderful developers who get to stuff their pockets, with the assistance of the hoodwinked citizenry: "If Mr. X has to go through a bidding process, he'll walk away and nothing will get done."
Roughly a dozen cronies of different fat cats have served that one up in the past few years.
Well, then screw Mr. X.
Sometimes, nothing is better than something. It certainly would have been better than the Great Hyde Park Golf Course Giveaway, which left taxpayers with nothing but yet another legal bill.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Dec. 20 2005 |