Even with her spot on the Republican line in November long secured and her Democratic challengers slugging it out in a four-way primary, Mayor Irene Elia's re-election campaign plunges deeper into a hole of her own making with each passing day.
No, not AquaFalls, the muddy pit that embodies a legacy of failed development in Niagara Falls predating Elia's entry into elective politics.
This gaping maw grows within Elia's budget, and sources have told the Niagara Falls Reporter it could end up costing city taxpayers upwards of $2 million.
With only two weeks remaining in the traditional tourist season, the pair of city-owned ramps is already running well over $1 million in the red when expenses, including debt service, are contrasted with revenues.
Last fall, with the opening of the Seneca Niagara Casino approaching, Seneca Gaming Corp. officials approached City Hall with a plan to renovate and lease the city's long-underutilized pair of parking ramps on the south side of Niagara Street.
The offer would have provided desperately needed repairs to the crumbling ramps and a fresh flow of badly needed cash to city coffers.
But Elia knew better. She chose to believe some ridiculously optimistic estimates of revenue if the ramps remained under city control, and told the Senecas to pound salt.
Herroner's repeated denials that such a deal was ever discussed run counter to multiple sources within both City Hall and the Seneca Gaming Corp.
"How do you turn down a deal like that? You could have gotten the ramps fixed, made some money and then got them back," one said. "Instead, you've still got the ramps in disrepair and you're getting yourself into debt."
Elia's 2003 budget predicted an incredible $2.7 million windfall from the ramps. In the finest Niagara Falls tradition, City Hall quickly allocated almost all of it, even before Seneca Niagara opened its doors.
"Those ramps have always cost the city money," said one City Hall source. "This time around, they budgeted them to make money, and they're not. Then they basically spent what they thought they were going to make."
Any chance of that estimate coming close to reality vanished when the Seneca Gaming Corp. opened a free valet parking lot behind the former Niagara Falls Convention and Civic Center, then took jackhammers to E. Dent Lackey Plaza and created another 500 spaces.
Despite the administration's best efforts, such as placing prominent signage attempting to misdirect casino visitors to the city's ramps, most folks seem to prefer the free spots provided by Seneca Niagara.
Even when the Seneca lots fill up, there are at least a half-dozen private lots closer to the casino that charge the same or less than the $8 tab at the city ramps.
Add in the hundreds of on-street spaces around the casino, and there's no reason for anyone heading to the casino to park in the ramps, ever, unless they seek the added thrill of getting mugged on the way out or having a piece of cement fall on their vehicle while they're feeding the slots.
In light of the fiscal failure of the ramps, the reason behind City Hall's relentless campaign to install parking meters at every available space near the casino becomes painfully obvious. That push stalled when it ran afoul of the downtown business community, as well as common sense.
Barring an unprecedented flood of visitors looking to pay too much for inconvenient, unsafe parking, the deficit figures to exceed $2 million by the end of the year.
"They'd have to turn those ramps over 20 times a day, every day, to make that gap up," a City Hall source said.
The abject failure of Elia's ramp scheme undermines her campaign's claims of fiscal responsibility. Less than three months before Election Day, she delivered another blow to her re-election effort last week when she announced plans to ask each of her department heads to resign if re-elected.
A central plank of her 1999 campaign was to end the city's tradition of political cronyism in selecting department heads, insisting she would find the most competent people for City Hall's most important jobs.
After taking office, she named failed sunglass magnate Al Joseph -- a key campaign worker -- as city administrator and tapped Paul Colangelo -- who has directed every successful mayoral bid since 1991 -- as public works director.
Throughout her term, Elia's department heads have remained loyal. Joseph regularly accompanies Herroner during her media interviews, while Fire Chief William Correa has hosted a weekly cable-access show with the mayor that served as little more than a lengthy campaign spot.
The department heads have also shown up, families in tow, to make the turnouts at Elia fundraising events appear somewhat less dismal.
Now, to thank them for their support, she wants the people she has repeatedly called the most competent department heads in the city's history to find new jobs.
Out of one side of her mouth, she wants voters to believe that she hired the best people possible. From the other, she's blaming those same people for the city's myriad problems.
And in the process, she's alienated the very core of whatever support she has heading into a brutal election season. In medical terms, this is known as peeing in the soup.
As bizarre as Elia's blame-scattering is in political terms, it doesn't work from a financial standpoint, either. The city charter doesn't specify term lengths for department heads, so if they don't willingly resign, Elia would have to order Joseph to fire the other department heads, then whack him herself.
Such a purge would require buyouts, with taxpayers picking up the tab, and very likely lead to expensive litigation.
Pointing fingers at her own people created a particularly messy situation in regard to Colangelo.
In addition to announcing that she plans to make him, along with the other department heads, reapply for his job if she wins another term, Elia told the Niagara Gazette last week that Richard Planavsky of Grand Island, not Colangelo, is heading her re-election effort. In an interesting side note, when asked about Planavsky's residency status, she claimed not to know where her own campaign manager lives.
Colangelo's apparent demotion triggered rampant speculation that he may wind up working for one of Elia's Democratic challengers. Colangelo has shown political flexibility in the past, managing campaigns and serving as public works director for both Jake Palillo, a Republican, and Democrat Jim Galie.
While Colangelo left City Hall under less than amicable terms during the terms of Palillo and Galie and has drawn heavy criticism during the Elia administration, his campaign skills and ability to back the right political horse are unquestioned.
That's why, according to another City Hall source, Herroner phoned Colangelo's office at least four times on the day the department-head story broke. Apparently, she wanted to make sure that telling the world he was not in charge of her campaign and would be asked to resign didn't give him the wrong idea.
With Democratic challengers Vince Anello, Sam Granieri and Paul Dyster locked in a statistical dead heat, according to a private, unpublished poll, and newcomer Glenn Choolokian not far behind, you'd think Elia would be solidifying her power base, not destroying it.
But, as with the parking mess, Herroner knows better.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | August 19 2003 |