Articles by: Mike Hudson

Landmark Delaware North trademark battle hearkens back to Maid of the Mist

Landmark Delaware North trademark battle hearkens back to Maid of the Mist

State and National News January 28, 2016 at 12:51 am

    Delaware North owner Jeremy Jacobs Sr. has apparently taken a page from Maid of the Mist owner Jimmy Glynn’s playbook. Friends, the pair provide concessions at Niagara Falls State Park. Back in 2011, as Glynn was fighting against an open bidding process for his Canadian tour boat concessionRead More

City spends millions to subsidize state’s USA Niagara Development

Uncategorized January 27, 2016 at 11:54 pm

      Niagara Falls is home to one of the world’s great natural wonders and draws more than 8 million tourists a year. It is also plays host to the Robert Moses Niagara Power Plant, which supplies much of the East Coast with electricity and generates hundreds of millionsRead More

Train station set to open with  one tenant, no museum here?

Train station set to open with one tenant, no museum here?

News, Niagara Falls January 27, 2016 at 11:46 pm

    Niagara Falls – With the city’s new train station and Underground Railroad Heritage Museum ready to open by the end of May, a couple of questions linger. How do you open a history museum when not a single artifact has been acquired or display fabricated? Despite the factRead More

Midtown arson recalls horrific  Moonglow Hotel fire of 1957

Midtown arson recalls horrific Moonglow Hotel fire of 1957

News January 7, 2016 at 1:06 am

  For some, last weekend’s torching of the Midtown Inn on Niagara Street brought to mind the Moonglow Hotel fire of November 1957. But while the destruction of the troubled Midtown may even be seen as something of a public service, the catastrophic Moonglow fire – which left 18 peopleRead More

Midtown Inn, mecca for prostitutes,  sex offenders, torched by arsonist

Midtown Inn, mecca for prostitutes, sex offenders, torched by arsonist

Niagara Falls January 7, 2016 at 12:57 am

    The Midtown Inn. For many residents on the city’s Southeast side, the ramshackle rooming house held a terror that would rival that of the Bates Motel, featured in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1963 tale of terror, “Phycho.” The inn was a target of controversy in 2009 when the New YorkRead More

Escape from New York: High taxes,  regulation result in mass exodus

Escape from New York: High taxes, regulation result in mass exodus

Uncategorized January 6, 2016 at 9:46 pm

  Is Albany fiddling while Rome, Utica, Buffalo and Niagara Falls burn? A report last week by the Empire Center for Public Policy noted that 153,921 more residents moved out of New York than moved in from other states over the 12 months through July 1, new US Census data show.Read More

Many New York cities pay $95,000 –  or less – for competent city engineer

Many New York cities pay $95,000 – or less – for competent city engineer

News January 5, 2016 at 6:23 pm

  By Mike Hudson Last week, our colleagues at the Niagara Gazette ran a thought provoking and largely sensible editorial calling for the hiring of a city engineer. That is a sensible position. Paying vast sums of money to outside engineering consultants from Buffalo – as Niagara Falls Mayor PaulRead More

City Taxpayers Footing Bill for Scores of $100,000 Salaries Here

City Taxpayers Footing Bill for Scores of $100,000 Salaries Here

News, Niagara Falls December 31, 2015 at 11:50 am

  One hundred thousand dollars. It’s a lot of money anywhere, but in a place like Niagara Falls, where money’s tight and jobs are scarce, it can be considered a fortune. In a city where the per capita income for all residents is just $20,327 and the average household scrapesRead More

Elusive City Engineer Job Description Absent From City’s Official Website

Uncategorized December 18, 2015 at 1:07 pm

The help wanted advertisement the Dyster administration ran in the Buffalo News and on a popular job seeking website in an apparent attempt to find a new city engineer contained a link to the city’s own website, niagarafallsusa.org. Potential city engineers were directed to the website where, it was promised,Read More

Religious Organization Takes Big Role In New Look Niagara Falls Economy

Religious Organization Takes Big Role In New Look Niagara Falls Economy

Uncategorized December 18, 2015 at 12:00 pm

For $325 a month and a $100 deposit, a man can get a 14’ x 8’ single occupancy room, with a built in dresser and a wardrobe closet, in the heart of downtown Niagara Falls, just steps away from the public library and Harry F. Abate Elementary School. He’d haveRead More

ECC President Jack Quinn
...under fire in state audit

Scathing State Audit Hits ECC’s Lax Control Environment2

Uncategorized January 28, 2015 at 11:51 pm

  The long-awaited state audit of Erie Community College (ECC) has now been released and it confirms much of what we have reported over the last several months about the management problems at the college that many have suggested have contributed to the institution’s current financial crisis that has resultedRead More

Obama, Cuomo, Dyster join forces  to make transparency more blurry   

Obama, Cuomo, Dyster join forces to make transparency more blurry  

Niagara Falls January 1, 1970 at 12:00 am

  Aside from the fact that they all happen to be Democrats, President Barack Obama, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Paul Dyster all have another trait in common – The belief that they can punish members of the press and the news organizations they work for by freezing them out,Read More

In Niagara Falls, home of big government  the rich get richer while the poor get poorer

In Niagara Falls, home of big government the rich get richer while the poor get poorer

Niagara Falls January 1, 1970 at 12:00 am

    Bad luck comes in threes, they say, and for residents of Niagara Falls this cliché has been visited with a vengeance. The perennially cash strapped city has both the highest crime rate and the highest taxes per capita of any municipality in New York State, and is runRead More

Niagara Falls now more dangerous  than ever before, new study shows

Niagara Falls now more dangerous than ever before, new study shows

    In its’ never ending quest to excel at something, Niagara Falls scored a big win of sorts this week. The small town with big dreams was ranked as the 44th Most Dangerous City in the entire United States by a website specializing in information for prospective home buyers andRead More

Is David Jaros actually Dyster’s  ‘de-facto’ city engineer?

Is David Jaros actually Dyster’s ‘de-facto’ city engineer?

  Is the real reason why Niagara Falls has gone without a city engineer for 53 of the 96 months that Paul Dyster has served as mayor because he already has one? David Jaros, formerly of Li-Ro Engineers and now of Clark Patterson Lee has managed to get most ofRead More

City’s $435,000 traffic island sculpture  nearly identical to $250,000 sculpture

City’s $435,000 traffic island sculpture nearly identical to $250,000 sculpture

          Who is Jeff Laramore? The obscure Midwestern artist selected by the city to design and install a $435,000 piece of sculpture on a deserted Rainbow Boulevard traffic island, directly in front of long shuttered Hotel Niagara, is hardly a household name. According to his officialRead More

Smith charges politics in  Planning Board ouster   

Smith charges politics in Planning Board ouster  

  It’s politics as usual at the City Hall of Niagara Falls Mayor Paul Dyster. That’s the charge of Rick Smith, who has served on the city Planning Board for the past nine years, six as its chairman. Smith ran for city Council in November on a platform critical ofRead More

More low income housing key  To Falls’ future? Dyster says yes!

More low income housing key To Falls’ future? Dyster says yes!

  Since when is $http://southbuffalonews.com2 million “affordable? That’s the price tag on the new Walnut Avenue Homes project – located on Walnut Avenue and Fifth, Sixth and Seventh streets. The development consists of seven new buildings and the renovation of the former Niagara Falls Board of Education Building. Applications areRead More

Sensible business or sweetheart deal?  Chilton Avenue residents want to know

Sensible business or sweetheart deal? Chilton Avenue residents want to know

  Niagara Falls – A city-owned Chilton Avenue apartment house set to be sold to a volunteer member of the Dyster administration for $500 was never advertised as being for sale, and no sign was ever posted on the front lawn describing it was such. Instead, Community Development Director SethRead More

City tourism office won’t get NTCC monkey off our backs  

  At least publicly, Niagara Falls Mayor Paul Dyster has sung the praises of the shadowy and secretive Niagara Tourism and Convention Corp., and its’ CEO John Percy. The NTCC benefits from nearly $2 million a year in city money, with around $900,000 coming from bed tax collections and anotherRead More

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