back to Niagara Falls Reporter archive
Over the past two weeks, the Reporter has asked a number of politicians, business people and private citizens to rank the members of the Niagara Falls City Council for effectiveness, vision and leadership over the past year. The results were somewhat surprising.
As many Republicans as Democrats were questioned and, while no two sets of rankings were exactly alike, most were similar in their placement of individual members at the top, middle and bottom of the list. The lone exception came from a prominent city businessman who remains fiercely loyal to Mayor Irene Elia. In his case, the rankings were the nearly the opposite of the norm.
We asked that each member be graded from A to F. No member was given an A on any of the report cards we received. For overall performance as a body, most gave the council a D or an F, and one person who had given them a C changed his mind and gave them an F after they passed a 15 percent property tax increase in response to Elia's requested 27 percent hike.
The good news is that, next year, the size of the council will be reduced from seven to five members. The bad news is that two of those members will be Fran Iusi and Paul Dyster, each of whom received failing grades on nearly every report card we received.
So here they are, first to worst as graded by the Reporter's decidedly unscientific survey:
Republicans and Democrats alike found Geracitano to be a surprisingly effective voice of opposition during the first year of the Elia administration. While it took Councilman Joe D'Angelo and Council Chairman Tony Quaranto some months to become disenchanted with the mayor's dictatorial management style, Geracitano positioned herself early on to raise the sometimes troubling issues caused in large part by Elia's refusal to listen to anyone.
The hardest-working member on the council, Geracitano earlier this year gave up her position as an advertising associate with the Reporter in order to spend more time at City Hall, particularly during the tough budget-making process. She sponsored the vast majority of cuts made to Elia's proposed 2001 budget and, with any luck, will be able to keep together the five-vote super-majority needed to sustain those cuts.
The fragile, bipartisan coalition, which includes Quaranto, D'Angelo and councilmen Charles Walker and John Accardo, seems held together by the sheer force of Geracitano's will. On the downside, a 15 percent tax increase still is way too high but, to her credit, Geracitano engineered the decreases with absolutely no cooperation at all from the city administration.
Creative changes in the way the city funds and operates its library, golf course, skating rinks, stadium, parking ramps and convention center are high on Geracitano's list of priorities. Unless others in municipal government see the wisdom of her thinking, tax increases of between 10 and 20 percent a year will become the norm for the foreseeable future.
In his freshman year on the council, D'Angelo has impressed many with his dedication, honesty and commitment. He has paid a price for this thoughtful, independent approach. In a recent interview, he told the Reporter that his 11-month tenure has sometimes felt like 11 years.
Clearly, during the early part of his term, he was willing to give the Elia administration the benefit of the doubt. He voted with the majority to restore many of the cuts made by the former council to this year's budget, including the reinstatement of a number of staff positions Elia said she couldn't do without.
By summer, however, the bloom was off the rose. D'Angelo began to become a voice of dissent. When it was revealed by the Reporter that City Administrator Al Joseph had a troubled financial history that included two bankrupted businesses, D'Angelo was the first councilman to question Joseph's stewardship of city government.
His current mantra centers on the Elia administration's utter refusal to work with the council, including the mayor's reported threat that she will take the council to court should they have the temerity to override her veto of any budget cuts.
D'Angelo also is disturbed by Elia's refusal to accept offers of $1 million and $4 million from Niagara Falls Redevelopment to stave off the tax increase.
"She said she wouldn't accept it because it constituted a one-shot revenue, but her logic is that by turning it down, we'll get a one-shot revenue from the state government next year," he said. "What's the difference?"
Charles Walker is a quiet, thoughtful man who doesn't always say much. When he does say something, however, people tend to listen. Invariably, he speaks with insight and intelligence.
For the many bettors in Niagara Falls, he also is the odds-on favorite to become council chairman next year.
Like D'Angelo, Walker expressed a desire to work with the Elia administration when it took office last January.
His subsequent record indicates he has become similarly disenchanted with the mayor's imperious and mercurial nature.
For our money, his sponsorship of the line item cut that eliminated the position of the deputy director of economic development makes him something of a cult hero.
Nancy Joseph, the current holder of that position, has done everything in her power to harm the Reporter, arguably the most successful business launched in Niagara Falls during the past year.
As with the other council members who earned passing grades, however, there is a feeling that Walker didn't go far enough. Why should any of the frauds who collect fat taxpayer-funded paychecks for the promotion of "economic development," "community development" or "tourism" be allowed to continue in their jobs? They should be embarrassed to show their faces in public.
Walker, in his sophomore year on the council, has become better with each passing day. And, as the council's lone African-American, he speaks for a constituency that is all too often overlooked by city government.
His upset loss to Elia in last year's mayoral election was a blow to Accardo both personally and professionally. While he's since done a good job of toughing it out, he has sometimes displayed an understandable distractedness that has led him to express serious doubts about whether to run for reelection next year.
Accardo has been the most vocal supporter of creative cost cutting, advocating privatization of the convention center and parking ramps, the sharing of services with the school district for the library and Sal Maglie Stadium and the elimination of the costly maintenance of the city jail by having the county Sheriff's Department assume the role of jailer, as it does for every other Niagara County community.
Without the cooperation of the city administration, however, it is unlikely that any of these innovative ideas will come to fruition. Like a majority of members on the council, Accardo has been frustrated by Elia's "my way or the highway" approach.
In a recent interview, Accardo expressed a feeling bordering on nostalgia for the years of the Galie administration. He isn't alone. There are many, many people in Niagara Falls today who are sorry they didn't vote for Accardo, or Galie, for that matter, in last year's mayoral election. Could the result possibly have been any worse?
No one tried harder to work with Mayor Irene Elia than Council Chairman Tony Quaranto. For months the veteran pol played pretty with the former nun in an effort to ... in an effort to what? Repeatedly he vouched for her and repeatedly he was made to look ridiculous. On several occasions, he promised her he could deliver the council votes needed to pass something she thought was important, only to get to the committee-of-the-whole meeting and discover the burgeoning anti-administration council faction had him stymied.
Quaranto is a likable guy who has been involved in county and city politics for as long as anyone can remember. And therein lies the problem. Under his watch, things have gone to hell in a hand basket. By definition, elected officials are supposed to be "leaders." We in Niagara Falls have been "led," over the past 25 years, from a relative prosperity into poverty, decay and hopelessness.
Of course, it's not all Quaranto's fault. He meant well and continues to mean well. There are plenty of others to share the blame. But more than anyone else currently involved in city government, Quaranto must assume some responsibility for the almost comical series of awful decisions that have resulted in the dire straits we find ourselves in today.
Stand next to her at the bar at Dante's, Misty's, Kelly's Corner, La Palermo or any of her other hangouts and you'll recognize Fran Iusi's problem immediately. SHE KNOWS EVERYTHING.
Her campaign pledge to bring a businesswoman's values to city government has proven to be more hot air than could fill a downtown developer's non-existent balloon ride. While she has presided over hundreds of layoffs at Tops Friendly Markets, she seems loathe to even consider the possibility of reducing staffing levels for the city.
Likewise, the prospects of privatization and shared services seem anathema to her. "It can't be done," she says, time and time again.
This can't-do attitude is exactly what is not needed from an elected official in a city that spends more for water, sewer, general government, community development, tourism and police protection than any similarly sized municipality in the state.
Iusi's unwavering support of the mayor's most inexplicable whims may get her the job she's seeking with the Pine Avenue Business Association, but it certainly hasn't won her any new friends among those who live, work and pay taxes in Niagara Falls.
Connie Lozinski, you are missed.
As much of a disappointment as Iusi's been, Paul Dyster's first year in office has been a disaster. After garnering more votes than even the mayor in last year's election, Dyster has shown himself to be little more than an administration stooge during his tenure thus far.
He brags incessantly about his accomplishments as an arms negotiator with the State Department and as a professor at American University in Washington, D.C. We can only hope he performed better in those jobs than he has as a city councilman here.
Maybe it's the fact that his late mother and Elia were close friends. Maybe it's the fact that he seems far more interested in the preservation of the old high school and the promotion of eco-tourism along the Niagara Gorge than about any of the mundane issues that routinely face the council. Or maybe it's the fact that he doesn't own a home in the city and chose to locate his homemade beer business in Wheatfield or Amherst or somewhere other than Niagara Falls.
Whatever the reasons, his lack of vision, courage and creativity have been nothing short of appalling.
With his landslide victory last year, Dyster was heard to comment that he should have run for mayor, and any number of pundits predicted he would do exactly that in 2004. Based on his performance over the past year, the likelihood of him being elected mayor, or dogcatcher, for that matter, seems remote, to say the least.
Vince Anello, you are missed