The Niagara Falls City Council last week passed an $85.3 million budget that contains no tax increase for residential property owners here. That's the good news.
The bad news is that, at the same time, the Council increased property taxes for businesses here by 3.3 percent.
"It's an increase, but the increase is so small, I don't think they'll feel that at all," said Councilman Sam Fruscione. "And that's coming from me, someone who is a business owner and pays business rates."
Actually, Fruscione's a schoolteacher. There's nothing wrong with that, certainly, but talking as though one's hobby is actually one's principal source of income can be misleading. In fact, his statement to the press could easily give an impressionable youngster in his classroom the idea that throwing together a Web site, having some T-shirts printed up and hosting a public access cable TV show might represent some manifestation of the American dream.
Fruscione went on to say that the tax break for homeowners was a "historic moment," basing this pronouncement on the fact that he has owned a home in the Falls for 17 years and can't remember the last time the city gave residential taxpayers a decrease.
Now, the Schoellkopf power plant disaster was a historic moment. As were the 1917 wreck of the Great Gorge Trolley, Annie Edson Taylor becoming the first person to go over the falls in a barrel in 1901 and the brutal 1969 slaying of prominent local defense attorney Jimmy LiBrize.
More recently, Irene Elia made history of the local sort when she became the first woman to serve as mayor of Niagara Falls in 2000.
But a City Council managing to pare just 1 percent off a mayor's proposed budget and increasing taxes on hard-strapped business people throughout the city? It barely rated a headline in the next morning's Gazette.
Can you imagine 20 years from now, or even 20 minutes from now, some old-timer telling his granddaughter about the day when Sam Fruscione and the boys made history here by passing the 2007 budget?
"Well, the taxes went up anyway because of the reassessments and even more pizzerias closed on Pine Avenue because 3.3 percent was more than their profit margin in the first place but, by gum, that was one historic moment!"
Here's hoping Fruscione isn't teaching history, at least.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | December 19 2006 |