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MORONS AND LIARS CLOSING OUR LIBRARY

By Mike Hudson

Let's face it. Only a moron would think that it would be a good thing for the city to close our public libraries. A moron or a group of morons.

But that is what our mayor and City Council have done. Unless something completely unforeseen happens, the Earl Brydges and LaSalle libraries will close next June.


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They will tell you that a referendum will be placed on the ballot in the spring to create a district library system, and the closing will not take place.

They are not only morons, they are lying morons.

Their rosy scenario depends on a bunch of big "ifs." If they can gather the signatures to place the measure on the ballot and if the voters of Niagara Falls approve it, they say, all will be fine.

Let's not forget that, just three years ago, the city's electorate voted down the exact same proposal.

Furthermore, even if the measure is passed, the transition will take 18 months and the library will end up being closed anyway.

They are liars. They are morons.

I get to the library once a week at least, sometimes three times a week. There are always a lot of people there. School kids, senior citizens, working people checking out books and videos, job seekers using the computers to put together a resume and others reading newspapers and magazines assembled in the excellent periodicals section.

While I haven't talked to her, I can't believe that Library Director Betty Babanoury and the excellent staff she's assembled are going to hang around for six months without a paycheck to wait and see what might or might not happen at City Hall.

There are, after all, libraries in every city and small town all across America.

Every city and small town, that is, not run by lying morons.

I suppose the Anello administration will regard this as a good thing. When the library eventually does reopen, the mayor can further implement his friends and family hiring program to fill the vacant library positions. If he does as well with the library as he's done with the grants writing and event coordinator departments, you won't be able to check out a book.

The Redhead got her master's degree in library science from the University of North Carolina. When I mentioned to her that they were going to close the library, she thought I was just kidding around. I assured her I was not, and she asked whether she could volunteer to work there to help keep it open.

I'll bet a lot of people would volunteer.

There are a lot of fine people -- I see them every summer at the book sale -- who already volunteer. They're called the Friends of the Library and they raise thousands of dollars each year for the institution.

If somebody asked them, they'd help out.

But morons don't ask, they dictate. And then they lie.

Let's face it. Niagara Falls already has a bad reputation.

The chemical companies that gave us Love Canal, the indicted former leadership of Laborers Local 91 and a generation of incompetent and often corrupt local politicians pretty much took care of that.

While it's easy to say that all those things are in the past, and that the casino opening and associated development might provide some sort of light at the end of what has been a long, dark tunnel, how many people do you think are going to want to come and live in a city where morons are permitted to shutter the public library?

At lunch last week, Ralph Aversa, head of NFC Development Corp., the city's lending arm, told the table that the Anello administration was doing a better job than any in recent history of moving the city forward.

I hate to argue while I'm eating, and the meat ravioli at the Como was especially good that day, but I had to speak up.

"You're closing the damned library," I said. "It's a disgrace."

Ralph replied by saying that the Anello administration was doing a better job than any in recent history of moving the city forward. I could only shake my head.

And lose my appetite.

Such is what we've come to expect over the past 11 months. The mayor -- whom the Reporter mistakenly endorsed in the November 2003 election -- has turned City Hall into a trough at which his family, cronies and do-nothing developers may feed.

As for the rest of us, library patrons in particular, we're on the outside looking in.

Morons. Liars.


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Niagara Falls Reporter www.niagarafallsreporter.com Nov. 30 2004