A Pandering Dyster Bursting with Gender Bias

Mayor Paul Dyster is a liberal.

Mayor Dyster loves these little guys nice and red....

In a guest view column in the Niagara Gazette, Mayor Paul A. Dyster, claiming reports that salaries were raised by $1.1 million in his 2014 proposed budget were misleading, tried to deflect matters with a reddish-looking herring.

The mayor took a shot at one of the more modestly paid employees at city hall, his former press aide, cancer survivor, now council assistant, Kevin Ormsby.

From 2008-2012, Ormsby wrote the mayor’s press releases, his media quotes, proclamations, other materials and served as staff on the tourism board and worked on special events.

After Ormsby's job was eliminated in Dyster's 2013 budget, he was hired by the council at the same rate of pay he was making as Dyster's press aide, $46,000 per year.

In any event, with dozens of the little boney but tasty small fry leaping, all red, from his mouth, Dyster complains that Ormsby, as council assistant, is making $4,000 more than his own assistant, or the assistant of the city administrator, both females, suggesting gender bias on the part of the council.

"The city council pays their assistant more, but he’s a man, whereas the other two are women. Does that seem fair?" Dyster writes.

Forget that salaries have leaped up toward the sky, like herrings, when pursued by an Arctic tern or whiskered porpoise, in the six years since Dyster took office; many have doubled, male and female alike; topping the $100,000 mark for the first time at city hall --all of them creating a crush to get parity- causing more to seek and get raises and with Dyster playing favorites. Forget that.

Dyster is talking gender bias.

If he was not an elected official and therefore presumably incapable of lying, one would have to say Mayor Dyster has made an art form out of lying by omission.

Among things Dyster omitted when he calls the fact that council assistant Ormsby makes $46,160 and that’s his idea of gender bias since his and the city administrator's female assistants make $40,540 each, is that Clara Hughes, the assistant to the DPW chief, makes $55,328. And the assistant to Community Development Director Seth Piccirillo, Mary Ann Colangelo, makes $51,000; or that the assistant to human resources makes $47,759; or the assistant to the corporation counsel, Jane Travis, gets $47,758.

Among seven principal assistants to seven departments of the city, six are women. Four make more than the man; two make less.

Does that seem unfair?

Dyster also omits that his new female assistant, Bridget Miles, got a $10,000 pay increase this year when she moved from typist in the corporation counsel's office to become his assistant upon the retirement of Donna Winstanley. Miles, like Winstanley, is to get $40,540.

Dyster is now proposing to raise the pay of Cindy Ransom, the assistant to City Administrator Donna Owens, from $36,605 to the same as Miles, $40,540.

His argument is that the city administrator's assistant has to get the same raise as his assistant.

Dyster could have hired Miles and paid her $36,605, the same as Ransom. Instead, he chose to give Miles the same starting salary as his former assistant, Winstanley, who worked many years to get from her mid-30's position to her $40,000 pay.

So Ransom, too, must get a raise of $4,293.

In the meantime, have a red herring on the mayor, they're rich in EPA and DHA fatty acids, vitamin D, B-6, B-12, and, the mayor's special additive, which he lavishes upon us at all times and in super abundance, vitamin BS.