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FROM BOMBS TO BREWS ... AND OTHER STUPID THINGS THE MAYOR DOES

FROM THE PUBLISHER By Frank Parlato Jr.

Many of the lesser intelligent lights in this city think that Mayor Paul "A-for-Apple-Head" Dyster is what he appears to be.

We have the definite impression that he is not.

The mayor has a 10-foot-tall paper sign written in crayon composed by children praising him hanging front and center at City Hall, and while children and perhaps nincompoops praise him, adults -- at least intelligent adults -- have every reason to doubt his veracity and claimed accomplishments.

For instance, the mayor uses public money to make his own street a historic district.The mayor left the Veterans Memorial groundbreaking to visit with the Japanese ambassador.

The mayor goes backstage on his vanity Hard Rock concerts paid for with public money and gets drunk with the performers.

The mayor says he is a green mayor and drives an SUV.

The mayor tries to partially pave all-green Jayne Park on Cayuga Island without telling the neighbors -- apparently so that some of his campaign contributors can get to do the studies.

The mayor fought against investing a few million in the Niagara Falls Airport -- which now is flying high, carrying thousands a month on discount fares -- so he could pursue a $40 million train station that will probably seat fewer than 1,000 riders a month.

The mayor takes a cop off the beat in a rising-crimewave city to guard his own office, where no violent crime was ever committed.

The mayor says the brightest and best are not locals, but from out of town -- then hires a mid-level garbage collector from Atlanta for $110,000; a journeyman bureaucrat for economic chief for $100,000 (fired); an unlicensed engineer from Iran for $90,000 (fired); and an unemployed man for fire chief at $79,000 (fired).

The mayor, while pretending he is Honest Abe, directs millions of dollars to campaign contributors in the form of awards, grants, appointments, no-bid contracts and services agreements.

Which reminds us of a story: The mayor walked three miles after City Hall closed to return a $100 check to a campaign contributor for whom he could not get taxpayer money for a no-bid contract.

The mayor claims on his resume he was an arms negotiator. While vetting the mayor's claims, we had to admit he often provided us with a chuckle -- usually inadvertently.

Checking into the extremely dubious claim that he was once an arms negotiator, we concluded that, as they say in Texas, "Mayor Dyster is all hat and no cattle." A bullshitter and a phony.

The mayor claims that from January 1988 until January 1989, when he was 34, he was in Washington as a top State Department representative in direct negotiations with the USSR. He wrote that himself, claiming he was in Switzerland as a State Department representative.

His duties, he wrote, related to issues of weapons of mass destruction and their control, and defense, and space negotiations, and strategic issues, and chemical and biological weapons control, and missile defense and anti-satellite weapons issues, and multilateral arms control.

His critics point out that, given his age, the fact he is a Democrat and this was during the Reagan administration, and the fact that he was only there for one year, it's impossible that he was anything other than a low-level employee, a junior aide or an intern.

Later research by this paper showed he was a principal bureau officer, whose duties are, according to the State Department manual, far from arms negotiation, but are connected with working in the kitchen and taking care of the vending machines -- a much more likely scenario for a 34-year-old rookie in the department.

In 1989, he left his world-peacekeeping role and came back to Niagara Falls to start a small business catering to beer-brewing hobbyists.

You've got to wonder how many arms negotiators went that way -- to the Beer Judge Certification program.

Dyster became a Certified Beer Judge in 1997. Then he rose to National Beer Judge in 2002.

From bombs to brews -- talk about a career slide!

This mayor, in our opinion, is a chucklehead.

Mayor Dyster declined several requests for interviews for this story.

Niagara Falls Reporter www.niagarafallsreporter.com April 12, 2011