By Tony Farina
If there are resident of Niagara Falls who believe the mayoral administration didn’t know a $20,000 change order to a tree-removal contract approved last June by the council was intended to benefit the mayor’s property and a neighbor’s property, I’ve got news for you. It sure looks like that’s what happened and lawmakers who have pushed for more information from the mayor and his brother, the city administrator, have pretty much come away empty-handed.
Let’s start by suggesting in a realistic way that Mayor Robert Restaino is definitely a hands-on mayor. The lawyer and former judge has a keen eye and it is simply incredulous to believe he didn’t know that the change order would cut down trees on his property and those of a neighbor on College Ave., but Councilman Donta Myles has been stymied in his requests for more detailed information about the tree removal work to clarify any potential misunderstanding.
Myles states that what he is requesting of the mayor “is not something that should be hard to get and should be readily available to me as a councilmember.” The city administrator, Anthony Restaino, has told Myles to schedule an interview to review applicable documents. Remember, under the city charter, it would seem Myles would be entitled to a detailed breakdown of what work was done without scheduling a meeting. No intent to deny information, said Restaino in an email to the Niagara Gazette, but in reality, the information has been effectively denied.
The mayor himself has said he didn’t know who performed the tree work at his property and also said he didn’t ask for it. In fact, in an interview with the Gazette, the mayor said he did not request the tree removal work to be done on his property and said he was a little bit perturbed it happened because it sort of takes away the ability for cooling in the summer. If the response was intended to cool down the tree removal controversy, it doesn’t look like it worked. Questions still linger.
Councilman Brian Archie abstained from the June vote on the tree-removal change order when Corporation Counsel Tom DeBoy told Archie he didn’t know the addresses of the four trees targeted for removal. Uncomfortable with the lack of information, Archie, in his role as a voice of the public, said he wasn’t comfortable voting to spend public money without knowing where the trees were located. A perfectly legitimate position for a lawmaker interested in protecting the integrity of public spending.
So things remain up in the air. Did this hands-on mayor know what the change order was for or is the administration just playing dumb to avoid further controversy?
Letting the facts speak for themselves to this point, the public can draw its own conclusion. Did the lawyer-mayor really not know what was going on? Judge for yourself.
