Niagara Falls – With the city’s new train station and Underground Railroad Heritage Museum ready to open by the end of May, a couple of questions linger. How do you open a history museum when not a single artifact has been acquired or display fabricated? Despite the factRead More

      It was the summer of 2013, almost three years ago, and the city of Niagara Falls was in the midst of a crisis. According to the Buffalo television stations and local newspapers quoting Mayor Paul Dyster, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and U.S. Sen Kirsten Gillibrand, one man wasRead More

Whether exposing the crooked Glynn Maid of the Mist monopoly, criticizing the Niagara Falls State Park “Landscape Improvements” plan which ruined Three Sisters Islands, sounding the alarm on the Parks Police barracks which was slated for the edge of the scenic Niagara Gorge, rallying the public against the demolition of the 1864Read More

The Reporter was pleased to see freshman council member Ezra Scott decline to support Mayor Dyster’s attempt to walk on a surprise resolution at the recent council meeting. The resolution aimed to tap the city till for up to $75,000 to support the hosting of a meeting of the GreatRead More

  There’s a mystery brewing on historic Chilton Avenue and several community activists have expressed interest in getting to the bottom of the puzzle’s particulars at the January 13 Planning Board meeting. The city, under the guidance of Seth Piccirillo, director of Mayor Paul Dyster’s Community Development Department, sold 631Read More

Vince Anello is a former Niagara Falls mayor and a current radio talk show host. He is also, by the nature of his time as mayor and councilman, a consummate student of municipal government. And for that reason he has  become persona non grata with the Dyster administration. On hisRead More

    The Midtown Inn. For many residents on the city’s Southeast side, the ramshackle rooming house held a terror that would rival that of the Bates Motel, featured in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1963 tale of terror, “Phycho.” The inn was a target of controversy in 2009 when the New YorkRead More

  One hundred thousand dollars. It’s a lot of money anywhere, but in a place like Niagara Falls, where money’s tight and jobs are scarce, it can be considered a fortune. In a city where the per capita income for all residents is just $20,327 and the average household scrapesRead More

By Ken Tompkins During my campaign, I focused on ways in which to reduce the city’s financial footprint and save tax payers’ money. One way was to reduce or eliminate the health care benefits and insurance opt-out payments for part-time elected officials and part-time political appointees (like the civil serviceRead More

These days every other website is doing rankings. And website ranking opinions are like certain anatomical parts – everybody has one or two of them. So this website called Road Snacks decides to rank cities in New York State and using their yardstick – Niagara Falls is the third worstRead More

Goodness gracious what was councilwoman Kristen Grandinetti thinking as she put pen to paper, or cursor to screen, to write her Gazette January http://southbuffalonews.comhttp://southbuffalonews.com, guest view titled, “The resumes are in”? The column heartily defended Mayor Dyster’s pre-Christmas call for a review of department head resumes. Dyster’s demand for hisRead More

  Aside from the fact that they all happen to be Democrats, President Barack Obama, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Paul Dyster all have another trait in common – The belief that they can punish members of the press and the news organizations they work for by freezing them out,Read More

    Bad luck comes in threes, they say, and for residents of Niagara Falls this cliché has been visited with a vengeance. The perennially cash strapped city has both the highest crime rate and the highest taxes per capita of any municipality in New York State, and is runRead More

Train station The Niagara Falls Reporter has been pointing out for the past four years that the train station has yet to find an operating budget. The Reporter also wrote not too long ago that the residents should look for US Sen. Charles Schumer to come to the rescue withRead More

  The Reporter has written any number of articles in the past calling for changes in city government, but never – never – have we received such an immediate and supportive response as our column last week where we called for the city controller position to be made an electedRead More

The city recently announced that it’s accepting RFP’s (requests for proposals) to operate Sal Maglie Stadium. In a Gazette article of December 27, Mayor Dyster said, “We don’t regard the direct operation of Sal Maglie as a cash cow…It doesn’t have the income possibilities as something like the Hyde ParkRead More

  It’s politics as usual at the City Hall of Niagara Falls Mayor Paul Dyster. That’s the charge of Rick Smith, who has served on the city Planning Board for the past nine years, six as its chairman. Smith ran for city Council in November on a platform critical ofRead More

Perhaps no agency has benefitted more from the commodification of poverty in Niagara Falls in recent years than the city’s Housing Authority. Created in http://southbuffalonews.com942 to provide housing for soldiers, sailors, Marines and others involved in the war effort, the agency has evolved through the years to provide not onlyRead More

(The Reporter’s resident feminist, Anna Howard, says the ‘woman was denied’) The city council held their 20http://southbuffalonews.com6 reorganization meeting today, January http://southbuffalonews.com, 20http://southbuffalonews.com6. And, as we feared, the male dominated council decided to let current chairman, Andrew Touma, remain in the big seat for 20http://southbuffalonews.com6.  As the saying goes, we’reRead More

Niagara Falls – There is a canard around this city that Glenn Choolokian is to blame for Mayor Paul Dyster’s reelection. Choolokian’s http://southbuffalonews.com300 plus “write in” votes were more than the difference between Dyster and his main challenger, John Accardo, who were separated by about 700 votes. People say that, had itRead More