The carpenters, all 70 of them, are back on the job at SolarCity, but more than 120 plumbers were still out as of Tuesday as the state scrambled to make $82.5 million in late payments to contractors who hadn’t been paid since October on the much-hyped Buffalo Billion program.Read More

State Sen. Marc Panepinto may face a Democratic primary in the 60th District this year and if he is victorious he will likely face a strong Republican challenge from the winner of an expected Republican primary between Erie County Clerk Chris Jacobs and Tonawanda attorney Kevin Stocker, but Panepinto isRead More

  As with so many other segments of the colorful tapestry that makes up the population of Niagara Falls, at least some of the city’s registered sex offenders appear to be packing up and leaving for greener pastures. According to the reference website city-data.com, there are currently 166 registered sex offendersRead More

Can Niagara Falls State Park be next? News of potential import to the city of Niagara Falls broke late last year when details of an epic legal showdown at Yosemite National Park became public. Subsequent to losing a $2 billion, 15-year contract extension for hospitality (food, hotel) services to competitorRead More

  Doing a story on Niagara Falls Mayor Paul Dyster’s 2016 State of the City speech is one thing. Sitting through it is quite another. For one thing, it involves sitting in a room with Dyster and listening to him. He is notorious for his ability to go one andRead More

Erie County Clerk Chris Jacobs, a Republican and a member of the prominent Jacobs family which owns the Delaware North companies, has told political leaders he is going to run for the 60th District State Senate seat now occupied by Sen. Marc Panepinto, a Democrat. “He told me he’s goingRead More

The Niagara Falls Reporter received two communications from the Niagara Falls Police Department this week. The first came on Feb. 23. it read: At 10:00 p.m. last night Niagara Falls Police Officers responded to 9 Monteagle Ridge for a reported assault. Upon arriving they found 39 year old Antoine MalloryRead More

   The company at the center of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s “Buffalo Billion” initiative and the stated reason Niagara Falls Mayor Paul Dyster and city Planner Tom DeSantis spent $165,000 of taxpayers’ money on a largely worthless piece of property on Highland Avenue is in serious financial difficulty, and analysts sayRead More

  Freshman City Councilman Kenny Tompkins says his first two months on the job have been something of an education. Coming from a long background in private business, he says the lack of communication between Council members has come as a bit of a surprise. “I’ve been disappointed in aRead More

  Why was parking lot operator John Guido paid $45,000 in public money last July to vacate the Rainbow Boulevard North property he leased from the city so that Buffalo developer Mark Hamister could begin construction of his proposed hotel? While at least five other hotels have been built inRead More

And so it begins. As the reality of the city debt and deficit sinks in – combined with the fact that the casino revenue is currently exhausted and dwindling for the coming years – city hall is frantically searching for ways to stem the tide of rapidly rising red ink.Read More

An October, 2015 Design Report/Environmental Assessment document jointly issued by the NYS Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (OPRHP) and the New York State Dept. of Transportation (NYSDOT) outlines the steps the two agencies will take to obtain the myriad regulatory approvals necessary to move forward with the construction of twoRead More

Niagara Falls Mayor Paul A. Dyster had hoped to push through his parking meter installation plan at the February 22 council meeting, but an unusually vocal group of residents pummeled the council and mayor with questions regarding operating costs of the parking plan. As a result the plan was votedRead More

  Niagara Falls – A series of arson fires targeting city-owned garbage totes has become a serious enough concern that both Fire Chief Thomas Colangelo and Police Chief Bryan Dal Porto have asked for the public’s help in identifying the culprits. In the meantime, Colangelo warned, garbage totes should beRead More

  Niagara Falls – Assurances by promoters of two proposed methadone clinics here will be beneficial both to recovering heroin addicts and the community as a whole flies in the face of a pair of recent studies that agree that replacing heroin with the even more highly addictive drug methadoneRead More

There’s two major differences between the seven point finance plan presented in this column and the finance plan recently offered by the council’s Financial Advisory Panel: The Reporter’s plan is both easily understood and easily implemented. No buzzwords. No double talk. Just straight forward remedies for the city’s sick fiscalRead More

  Over the past two years Governor Andrew Cuomo has promised tens of millions of dollars of economic aid for the city of Niagara Falls. So far, the city has received none of it. Not only that, but after having been a regular visitor here, it now appears the governor is distancingRead More

  The city bed tax is being collected “erroneously, illegally and/or unconstitutionally” according to the Article 78 action brought against the city by the DiCienzo family and their company, NFNY Hotel Management. The suit, filed on the DiCienzo’s behalf by local attorney John Bartolomei in Niagara County Supreme Court, seeksRead More

This commercial building at 1389 Niagara St. once housed shops on the first floor and nice little apartments upstairs. It has been derelict for years and is representative of the spinoff resulting from the opening of the Seneca Niagara Casino, almost directly across the street. While there are no “nice” blacksRead More

There is so much wrong with the Seneca proposal to open up tax free gas station [s] in Niagara Falls, it is hard to know where to start. The Seneca Gaming Corporation, confronted with declining casino revenue, plan to expand their tax free operations exactly as this publication predicted forRead More