NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. — On Tuesday, voters will decide whether the City Council becomes an independent check on Mayor Robert M. Restaino—or continues to be an extension of his office.
Five seats. Three are on the line.
Mayor Robert Restaino’s slate — John Kinney, Noah Muñoz, and Bridget Myles — is running as a team. If they win, Restaino continues to run the council. The chairman, Jim Perry, is supposed to run the council, but he follows the mayor’s directives. He keeps meetings quiet, cuts people off, and leaves the room when the questions get awkward or hard.
Restaino has fielded his three to buttress his yes-man Perry: John, Noah, and Bridget – nodding yes like dashboard bobbleheads every time he says the word “progress.”
Two Visions of Power
The Republicans have fielded challengers: Vincent Cauley, David Zajac, and Tanya Barone. They think a council’s job isn’t to agree, but to decide. To tell the mayor no when his spending doesn’t seem right.
The Niagara Falls City Charter was written so the mayor can’t run the town alone. It said there had to be a council —now five members — who should control the money, watch the mayor, debate issues, make laws, and even oppose the mayor when, in their good judgment, they see something is wrong. It’s not complicated—one man leads, five others each have a vote. The majority —three—can stop a mayor from doing whatever he pleases.
It’s hard to believe, but the Niagara Falls City Charter—like most city charters in the United States—was designed to keep the mayor honest.
Republicans Cauley, Zajac, and Barone see the charter this way. They believe the council was meant to ask questions. It’s not that they hate the mayor. They just don’t think one man should love himself so much as this mayor does at the city’s expense. If you don’t want that kind of independence, then Kinney, Muñoz, and Myles are your best choice. They smile when Mayor Restaino speaks and nod when he wants them to. They are eager to please and happy to let the mayor decide for them.
Their opponents, Cauley, Zajac, and Barone, they will admit, have not joined the mayor’s fan club.
The Mayor’s Idea of Progress
The mayor says the city’s been stuck too long. The only way to move is with everyone pulling the same way. His way. He calls it progress. he is the only one with the judgment to save the city. He believes a council that questions slows progress down.
Some mayors want thinkers, skeptics, doubters, voices that debate. Not this one. He is not a man fond of resistance. He wants calm meetings and quick votes. He tells voters that only a unified council can allow him to rescue Niagara Falls.
Meanwhile, the city’s still broke. He’s six years in office. Most of that time he has had a go-along council. Look around. Have you spotted the progress? Crime is up. The streets are wretched. Taxes keep going up. People keep leaving. You can have one man run a town. Niagara Falls has had that for six years.
Now voters have a chance to change that. The three seats that are up for election can flip the majority from Restaino’s lackeys to independent council members that can sometimes say no. It isn’t a nuisance. The city charter didn’t create the city council to rubber-stamp every mayoral wish.
The Choice Before the Falls
The mayor’s friends say everything’s fine; the challengers say it could be a lot better. If he gets all three, along with the puppet-chairman, Restaino will spend with the confidence of someone who’s never told no. He won’t need to ask again. And the quiet arithmetic of favors, of promises kept and debts repaid will continue. If Tuesday delivers him the super majority, Restaino crosses a line few mayors ever reach: unchecked power. No vetoes to stop him. No council to audit, amend or suspend belief in his infallible judgment.
Three loyal votes and one faithful chairman are all it takes. He’ll spend like Santa Claus on city credit, and everyone will clap until the bill comes due. That due bill will come most assuredly and most likely after the next mayor sits in the seat Restaino deems his throne. Tuesday’s coming. The mayor’s team is already congratulating itself. Endlessly patting themselves on the back. But the challengers keep walking, knocking, asking – do we want more unrestrained Restaino, or perhaps a little less?
If Cauley, Zajac, and Barone win, there’s a chance for the council to be what it was meant to be. The Niagara Falls charter is the city’s constitution. It divides authority for a reason. The charter doesn’t belong to the mayor. It belongs to the people who pay the bills. Every government needs a second opinion. That’s why they have councils. Without them, contracts slip through, and spending spirals. Voters should care because taxes are money, and money is life—paved roads, lit streets, clean parks.
Should Cauley, Zajac, and Barone be elected, the mayor will no longer run the city by decree. The council may return to its pre-Restaino purpose: to represent, to restrain, and to reveal waste and self-serving plans of which this mayor has a-plenty.
Yes, the mayor and his council candidates keep patting each other on the back. But someone asked and someone answered: “What’s the difference between a pat on the back and a kick in the ass?”
“About six inches.” Or in the case of Niagara Falls and its low voter turnout – about 300 votes.
Power shifts, or it doesn’t. Either the mayor wins his majority or he doesn’t. Somebody wins, somebody loses. Whatever happens, the Falls will keep falling. Niagara Falls will survive either way.
This Tuesday, the voters, not Restaino, hold all the cards.