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CITYCIDE: VENTURE INTO UNCHARTED TERRITORY UNCOVERS SIGNS OF LIFE FOR FALLS

By David Staba

The last time I sat in the mayor's office at City Hall, it was to see Jim Galie and discuss the future of minor league baseball -- which, as it turned out, was nonexistent -- with the then-chief executive of Niagara Falls.

So it had been a while.

Though the office's occupant had changed three times during the interceding dozen years, I'm pretty sure I sat in the same chair, a stiffly upholstered dark-blue number not unlike a fixture in your grandmother's living room, something better suited for viewing than sitting (especially since she probably kept hers covered in plastic, so as to avoid stains, burns, hairs or any other sign of humanity from besmirching it).

The previous two mayors were loath to welcome staffers from the Niagara Falls Reporter into their executive chambers and, let's be honest here, who could blame them? So the last time I'd seen the room was when a concerned citizen provided us with candid photographs snapped during an informal after-hours fete hosted by the daughter of its most recent ex-tenant.

None of the Budweiser cans from that infamous soiree were visible during my visit to see Paul Dyster on Friday afternoon, nor was the ceremonial gold shovel featured prominently in one of the photographs, which gained a touch of notoriety after their existence was first mentioned on these pages, anywhere to be seen. Perhaps Vincenzo V. Anello felt he needed it in order to conduct imaginary ground-breakings as he plots his glorious comeback.

The walls of the executive suite are largely bare, other than a couple of paintings and a large card from students at the 79th Street Elementary School thanking the mayor for making "Career Awareness Week extra special." The mayor in question was the late Michael O'Laughlin and the card is dated May 13, 1988, so the life's work of the signatories is presumably well under way.

Sitting in the other half of the dark-blue chair set, Dyster said a frugal refurbishing is in progress to give the environs a more welcoming feel. An 8-pound walleye he hooked back in the 1980s is at the taxidermist's for a touching-up before it goes up on the wall, for example. Government officials, community leaders and residents who have never before had cause to venture into the executive chambers visit on a daily basis, he said.

"It's been hectic," Dyster said of his first 50 days in office, a period further shortened by an emergency hospitalization and emergency gall-bladder surgery during his first week in office. "I think there is a lot of curiosity about the new administration."

Sorting through the municipal clutter that greeted the new mayor after his Jan. 1 inauguration has been the first task. The three volunteer members of the board in charge of the local development corporation formed to oversee construction of the $44.6 million courthouse on Main Street tendered their resignations en masse, unsure of what they were supposed to be doing, or how they were to do it.

It can only be construed as a parting shot by Anello, whose obstinate efforts to turn the massive state-mandated project into a public-works project he could control delayed construction by more than a year. After the City Council and New York State Legislature finally steamrollered him by creating the LDC after he failed to gather enough signatures to even run for a second term, the lamest of ducks prevaricated further, failing to name the board's members until his final weeks in office.

The wariness of those unpaid appointees -- Mike Hooper, Lucy Muto and Gene Carella -- is understandable, since their precise responsibilities don't seem to be spelled out anywhere. "No one knows where the by-laws are," Dyster said, "if there are any."

Dyster has delayed accepting the resignations until it can be figured out how to go about replacing them, such as if their replacements are legally required to be appointed before they can step down. In order to make things more manageable for the board, he has proposed hiring a company or individual to serve as a construction manager working on behalf of the LDC, providing professional expertise to its volunteer members.

After being told by the corporation counsel that issuing a request for proposals for the position was permissible, but not required, Dyster said he decided to find a person or company free of conflicts of interest to serve as the city's watchdog.

"I wanted to try to find a party that's legitimately disinterested and aggressively attempt to hire them," he said. "It's not going to be inexpensive to hire someone, but everyone seems to believe this is going to be money well-spent."

So as soon as Dyster proposed the idea earlier this month, he began getting barraged with the names of prospective candidates. This being Niagara Falls, most of them had either bid on the contract to oversee construction before it went to Ciminelli-Largo following a torturous, oft-delayed process, or had attempted to inject themselves into the pipeline somewhere along the way. In other words, the usual suspects were ready and willing to infiltrate a new administration.

One suggestion for manager missed the point: Dominic Massaro, a partner in the firm of Sicoli and Massaro, whose brother, city school district attorney Angelo Massaro, had magnanimously offered to serve as project manager -- in return for a seven-figure fee -- a couple of years back.

"I'd like to step over the obvious candidates, trying to avoid the reality and even the appearance of conflict of interest," Dyster said. "If I'm looking for a project manager, I don't want to be spoon-fed one, because that makes me suspicious."

At the same time, the national search to fill key City Hall positions traditionally occupied by patronage appointees continues, with interviews for some posts expected to begin in the next week, Dyster said.

The city's low housing costs, which would seem to be an enticement, have instead served as something of a deterrent, since buying a home at a quarter of the price a similar property would fetch in, say, the Boston area exposes a potential candidate to a hard capital-gains tax hit.

Along with the large-scale realities of courthouse construction and the long-term implications of making those key hires, Dyster said the administration has been working on a comprehensive plan for addressing the city's more immediate future, such as making sure there are enough functioning snow plows, finding the resources to begin solidifying the crumbling infrastructure of Niagara Falls and ensuring that the city can pay for its share of economic development efforts.

Revenue from the Seneca Niagara Casino and increased state aid has helped pull the city back from the brink of financial catastrophe, where it spent much of the last two administrations.

"How do we build back in the direction of a healthy city government and do it in a way that's sustainable?" Dyster said. "What we don't want to do is turn back into a situation where we're insolvent. There's no excuse for that."

He said he plans to work with City Council members this week in order to start putting forth proposals at the legislative body's Feb. 25 meeting.

"We want to do some pay-as-you-go projects, along with some bonding. If you wanted to be super conservative, you could say, 'we'll only do pay-as-you-go.' But then how do you do really big projects? That doesn't necessarily make sense."

A key player in almost any large-scale plan for the city's future, Gov. Eliot Spitzer met with Dyster and other local leaders last Wednesday at Shorty's Ultimate Sports Bar and Grill on Pine Avenue.

Ringed by televisions showing live coverage of Roger Clemens' shameful appearance before a congressional committee avoiding real work by engaging in an advanced form of jock-sniffing, the meeting's participants talked about the prospects for development downtown and along Main Street, Dyster said.

Dyster said Spitzer cited the additional revenue generated by the casino, progress on the courthouse and plans for renovating the historic Customs House as a train station as selling points to developers who are already here, as well as those who have avoided Niagara Falls, N.Y., for obvious reasons.

"He's assuring people that it's time to take a fresh look at downtown," Dyster said of Spitzer. "We want to see if we can break things loose. That encourages me to think that this is the right time to reach out to our potential partners for downtown development."

The main needs downtown include additional attractions and more upscale lodging for tourists, as well as housing and retail, particularly given the strength of the Canadian dollar, the mayor said.

"If we can move one of these areas forward, maybe they'll pull the others along," he said.

Even a fraction of all this positive talk becoming reality (which never, ever, never approximates a sure thing in these parts) would be cause for a very different sort of party in the mayor's office, one with a somewhat different class of revelers.

He might even be able to afford some new chairs.


David Staba is the sports editor of the Niagara Falls Reporter. He welcomes e-mail at dstaba13@aol.com.

Niagara Falls Reporter www.niagarafallsreporter.com Feb. 19 2008