A last-minute budget amendment giving hefty pay raises to two appointees of the GOP majority of the Niagara County Legislature is coming under heavy fire today from Minority Leader Dennis Virtuoso of Niagara Falls. Virtuoso told the Niagara Falls Reporter that the raises pushed through by the majority inRead More

This newspaper first started reporting on the Niagara River Greenway Commission over ten years ago, in a Feb. 1, 2005 article headlined, “PATAKI GREENWAY PROPOSAL STINKS”. Among the problems identified at the outset: When an activist group of Niagara County environmentalists realized that Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper was selling them downRead More

A man for all seasons. Niagara Falls Mayor Paul Dyster sent out a press release to the local media (except the Reporter) to announce that there were “warming centers” for homeless people – which while taking credit in the press, he had, as far as we could determine, little toRead More

Last March, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that a section of the north Robert Moses Parkway paralleling Whirlpool Street in the city will be removed, at a cost of $42 million. Perhaps the most interesting line of his press release was the following: “The project will remove an underutilized two-mile segmentRead More

Yesterday at 10 am, a mere 24 hours after the politicians and local media welcomed the first Amtrak train to the new Niagara Falls International Train Station, Intermodal Transportation Center and Customhouse Interpretive Center (“NFITSITCCIC”), we dropped in to snap some photos. The morning after, so to speak. First impressionRead More

The One Niagara Welcome Center is located at 360 Rainbow Blvd. within  earshot of mighty Niagara Falls and stands nine-stories tall, a can’t miss landmark that serves, according to its website, as a tourism and sightseeing haven offering bus tours, guided exploration, historical presentations, dining and souvenirs. The bustling touristRead More

Last week we offered readers the news that we had something more to say about the Hamister Hotel deal in downtown Niagara Falls. Normally we would not care about a small, limited service hotel now being built except for the fact that it has been subsidized by taxpayers and appearsRead More

Recent developments with Delaware North, multinational food service, gaming and sports conglomerate, don’t bode well for the future of the city of Niagara Falls. Earlier this month Christopher Jacobs won election to the New York State Senate. Nephew of Jacobs family patriarch and multibillionaire Jeremy Jacobs, Sr., Chris’ election allRead More

The trashing of the city of Niagara Falls in the mainstream media continues unabated – it’s practically becoming a national pastime – and now a leading and reputable financial industry information clearinghouse, Bankrate, has joined the crowd – rating Niagara Falls as the worst place in the nation for retirement.Read More

A dry-eyed look at the city of Niagara Falls though the cold lens of real statistics. Crime According to the September, 2016 FBI report “Crime in the United States”, there were 555 violent crimes reported in the city of Niagara Falls for the year 2015, including 3 murders, 32 rapes,Read More

Next month, Niagara Falls Mayor Paul Dyster will be commencing his 10th year in office. In light of the dismally high rates of crime, poverty and taxation here in the city, and now last week’s announcement by Bankrate that it’s the worst place in the entire country to retire, howRead More

With both sides making compromises, Niagara Falls Council Chairman Andrew Touma said there is agreement on the 2017 city budget, with lawmakers finally settling on a total of $558,000 in cuts to the mayor’s proposed $91 million spending plan with no mayoral vetoes on the horizon. “It shows what governmentRead More

     The recently-released FBI report “Crime in the United States” singled out the city of Niagara Falls as having the highest rate of violent crime in all of New York State. During 2015, residents experienced 555 violent crimes, characterized as robbery, rape, murder and assault, a per capita rateRead More

     This summer the city of Hamilton, a prosperous Canadian city of over a half million inhabitants located just over the border in Ontario, renamed a portion of its heavily-traveled Burlington Street, “Nikola Tesla Boulevard”.      According to the Hamilton Community News, “Several hundred spectators attended the roadRead More

Maybe this time someone will listen. We’re talking about the Hamister Hotel now being built in downtown Niagara Falls. So far we have written about it dozens of times. And so far, as far as we can tell, federal and state investigators seem content to ignore this ‘hide in plainRead More

There seems to be no let-up of bad news for Niagara Rehabilitation & Nursing Center as just this week Channel 7 Eyewitness News reported yet another incident involving the facility, which has frequently been the target of state investigations over the years. A patient named David Willis simply walked outRead More

Rumor has it that the $500,000 fire hall renovation by Isaiah 61 has once again proven the incompetence of the Dyster administration. After spending more than $100,000 fixing the roof, the city just discovered that the back wall is caving in. Reminds us of when Isaiah 61 was renovating aRead More

When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie – it could be because you were outside enjoying a once-in-a-lifetime experience this week. The moon was 14 per cent bigger and 30 per cent brighter than it normally is. A “supermoon”, as its called, occurs when the moonRead More

Dharshan and Shannon Jayasinghe and Dr. Michael and Liz Mitchell have been named co-chairs of The 2017 Premier, Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center’s annual black tie dinner and entertainment gala. Dharshan Jayasinghe is chief executive officer of bizWin Strategies, a national executive search and recruiting firm that provides innovative andRead More

As we reported two weeks ago, the 2015 FBI annual report “Crime in the United States”, released in late September of this year, ranked Niagara Falls as being the most violent city in New York State. Based on 555 violent crimes reported for Niagara Falls for 2015, and a populationRead More