The fight continues between (38 year) US Army veteran/community activist Arlene Doss and cowardly bully Mayor Robert Restaino over the Beech Avenue Project. Despite Arlene’s larger-than-life moral stature, it would be misleading to label this a “Battle of the Titans” due to the stark contrast between Mayor Restaino’s petty impish character and Arlene’s formidable abilities/community support.
For those who are just now catching up: While campaigning, Mayor Restaino promised the good folks living in the North End of town that the City would build the Beech Avenue park and event center. Arlene Doss was among those who received hope from this campaign promise, which turned out to be nothing but lip service. Now, Mayor Restaino suddenly has self-imposed amnesia, a reflection of the very nature of his political promises: Hollow.
“Restaino is just pissed that a person we consider a stranger decided to run against him, with no campaigning, and he only won by a couple hundred votes. Now he’s punishing the Fourth District,” Arlene Doss told the Niagara Reporter.
Mayor Restaino’s proposed budget includes line items for Beech Avenue Park, which was being paid for by ARP funds.
For months, Arlene Doss has publicly sworn that Mayor Restaino’s failure of an administration had promised funding for the Beech Avenue Project. Mayor Restaino, Council Chairman Jim Perry, and Councilmembers Traci Bax and David Zajac have gaslit Arlene Doss by saying that she is spreading misinformation; and by pretending they had no prior knowledge of this budget item. However, last Wednesday, November 6th, Arlene exposed the truth during a City Council meeting when she passed out copies of previous Niagara Falls city budgets which she found online. The budgets do in fact include line items for Beech Avenue Park.
Mayor Restaino’s proposed budget includes line items for Beech Avenue Park, which was being paid for by ARP funds.
The latest budget which ranges from 2024-2028 lists $180,000 in funding for Beech Avenue in 2024 and $2,250,000 in 2025 set aside for the park. The proposed budget prior to that one (labeled “2023 – 2027”) lists $150,000 for the park in 2023 and another $150,000 in 2024. Yet, for some reason Mayor Restaino appears to have no knowledge of any of this despite the fact that these line items/numbers were found in the Mayor’s proposed budget for 2022.
In his weekly YouTube address on October 11th, Mayor Restaino addressed Arlene Doss and her team indirectly, saying “They talk about how they weren’t a part of the discussion, or what they’re asking for has been ignored or they’ve been deceived; they were promised something and didn’t get it. One such craziness is this discussion of how the American Rescue Plan funds were discussed, approved and then ultimately distributed.”
In the video Mayor Restaino is seated in front of a dry erase board on which he has written the words “Facts Matter”. Says Mayor Restaino, “There’s been an awful lot of misinformation that’s out there and as the board behind me says, facts matter. We’ve had a couple of public displays of inaccuracy. Leftward leaning personalities that want nothing more than to provide misinformation because it’s easier for them to act like a victim than to be honest with people about really what’s happening.” It almost seems as if Mayor Restaino is talking about himself as he continues, “In order to get people often to support what you would like them to do, you have to either create yourself to be the professional victim or you use fear. We see so much of that, with product placement in regular television advertisement.”
After Mayor Restaino mentions “product placement in regular television advertisement,” he does something very strange. Referring to Arlene Doss, Donta Myles and their team of activists, Restaino says, “Then you’ve got some characters who, you know take a page out of the playbook of NFR. They share that same methodology, I often wonder what else they share.”
In his weekly address on October 11th, Mayor Restaino plays with a wad of tax dollars and uses it as a prop to imply that Arlene Doss and her team are accepting bribes from NFR.
While he says this last sentence, Mayor Restaino picks up a wad of cash held together by a money clip. He unclips it and waves the cash around, using it as a prop to imply that NFR is bribing honest civilian taxpayers to oppose his agenda. Mayor Restaino seriously believes that his viewers will find his conspiracy theory more plausible than the truth; which is that activists supporting the Beech Avenue Project are standing up to his corruption.
Considering that the wad of cash is his own (who else’s would it be?), and considering that the taxpayers pay Mayor Restaino’s salary, what we are seeing here is a truly disgusting display of arrogance by a public servant. Our mayor is literally playing with our tax dollars, waving them in front of us to imply that all who oppose him must be doing so at the behest of NFR. Here on full display Mayor Restaino has exposed his ulterior motives to railroad the Beech Avenue Project because in his delusional egomaniacal brain, NFR must be behind everyone and anyone who disagrees with him. I wonder if Mayor Restaino checks under his bed at night for NFR before switching out the lights?
What happened? The City of Niagara Falls, NY clearly had plans for the Beech Avenue Project. Was that funding reallocated to other parks?
In the video, Mayor Restaino goes on to say, “Some of these misleading public figures have decided that they’re going to rewrite what happened because it doesn’t fit their narrative, right? So, they create this false narrative. They try real hard and make sure that they say it over and over and over and over again, that people will believe them. But again, just as the board behind me says – facts matter. And the facts are that number one: The projects that these misleading public individuals are saying are not a part of the factual evidence of what the American Rescue Plan was going to be used.” The only public figure he could be referring to is Councilman Donta Myles, since Arlene Doss is a private citizen.
Arlene Doss did go to the city website just like Mayor Restaino suggested; and in-so-doing she caught Mayor Restaino in a lie by providing the proposed 2024-2027 city budget which shows millions of dollars in funding planned for the Beech Avenue Park. In fact, according to a document found on a NYS permit website which is from Colliers Engineering & Design; construction documents were in development for the Beech Avenue park project as of April 15th, 2024. The engineering firm along with official city documents stresses that input from neighborhood residents and the public are heavily considered in this process. Mayor Restaino must not have gotten that memo… or did he?
According to this press release; September 28th, 2023 there was a city-owned and operated website for the Beech Avenue Project which was created by Bergmann (a Colliers Engineering & Design affiliate hired by the City). That website became defunct sometime after September 1st, 2024 but it can still be viewed using the Internet Wayback Machine. Unfortunately, none of the links to the documents which were once publicly available on this website work. A different website called ConstructConnect hosts the project RFP; on this website the “event date” for the project is listed as June 3rd, 2024.
The website states, “As of February 7, 2024, an engineer has been selected for the project. Bidding is estimated to take place after April/May of 2024.” The project is listed as “RFP Design – Beech Avenue Community Center Park Design and Development – 4641209”. The City of Niagara Falls entered into a contract with Bergmann for the design stage of the project in July of 2022; and the contract states “The cost to the City for this project shall not exceed $189,860.00. Funding for this project is available from American Rescue Plan Funds under the Treasury Guidance Expenditure Category 2.22 which is ‘Strong Healthy Communities’.”
Official city documents highlight the area for the Beech Avenue Community Park location.
Mayor Restaino must be aware of the work that has been done on the Beech Avenue Project, right? Maybe not, because in his video Restaino says “This notion that somehow they were promised something and then it was removed from them is also just ‘let’s create our own narrative so that we can make ourselves the victim again.’ You know, I think that most of the people in this community are smarter than that. And again, these characters that go out there and use the same tactics that NFR uses and share that same message, again I don’t know what else they share… sometimes you wonder.” Again Mayor Restaino picks up the wad of tax dollars and fans through it, showing it to the camera as a prop while hurling accusations against private citizens who are not backing down from his bullying tactics.
As an attorney and disgraced former judge, Mayor Restaino knows that he cannot openly mention Arlene Doss by name because she is a private citizen and not a public person. Mentioning Arlene by name could result in a lawsuit for defamation of character and slander for his baseless and theatrical implications.
Arlene Doss issued a public response to Mayor Restaino’s implications on her Facebook page (10/12/24).
Furthermore, the line items for Beech Avenue Park in the City’s Proposed 2025 budget are found on the City’s website. So why is Mayor Restaino pretending like he never proposed using ARP funds for Beech Avenue Park? Or is he attempting to exclude the public from participation in this project? What exactly is Mayor Restaino trying to hide?
Mayor Restaino goes on to say, “But the truth is that anybody can go to the city’s website and anybody can see where the American Rescue funds are targeted to. And then take a look at these people who want to continue this false description of things, and I would say that again because I really do have confidence in this community, just reject what they’re saying. Because they really have their own agenda at heart. They’re not really interested in what you are interested in and all they really want to do is try to confuse and convince you that again they’re a victim. Somebody did not give them what they are looking for, and rather than go and approach the issue in a mature and professional manner; they decided they’re just going to throw a tantrum, complain that they’re a victim, see if they can get some media types to follow up on this because after all a good controversy makes a good news story. And there you have it, that’s kinda where they live. But enough about that, I just ask you to please, you know… you’ve got information at your fingertips and you can find out what the facts are. Do something they’re not doing, and that is they’re not bothering to engage either in having direct conversations and having clear understanding of the facts, but I know you’ll do better than that. So um, just keep that in mind as you hear all of this noise.”
Good people of Niagara Falls, this is your mayor; the Gaslight King of Niagara Falls. In his video, he is gaslighting everyone and telling them to reject everything said by Arlene Doss, Councilman Donta Myles or anyone associated with them. Mayor Restaino seeks to create division in our community, and to suppress the voices of marginalized people living in the Forgotten Fourth District.
Councilman Myles told the Reporter, “Mayor Restaino is punishing Black People because he lost the so-called Black vote in his last election. That’s exactly what he’s doing. His so-called Black leaders didn’t produce the turn out that he expected and now he’s pissed. The minute Mayor Restaino feels that you don’t march to the beat of his drum, that’s when he begins to exercise his racism. The way he plays pretend is deceitful.”
When asked whether or not the City Council was aware that there was prior funding earmarked in the City budget for Beech Avenue, Myles stated, “We’ve addressed it a couple of times at Council, explaining how we already had funds allocated towards the Beech Avenue Project. Traci Bax asks ‘what are we going to defund to support this project?’ She says that every time. They all play this game, pretending like they didn’t know. Absolutely we were all aware of it. The gaslighting is always serious. This administration often says that I don’t do my homework. It seems like none of my colleagues have done their due diligence to pay attention to what was already in our budget, even prior to us taking office. This is not coming out of thin air.”
Myles explained, “During our budget amendment meeting that we had last year there was a very convenient glitch in the recording system. We had some amendments to make and we did the entire meeting. After the meeting they said ‘oops, the recorder wasn’t working!’ The meeting was null and void. And Arlene Doss proved that that item was already in the proposed budget. So if it was already included in the budget, it should still be there because we did not have any amendments last year due to the glitch in the recording system. The only person I could think of who had access to delete that item from the budget is Mayor Restaino.”
Councilman Donta Myles points out that the budgets Arlene Doss passed around at last week’s council meeting show that the city included $150,000 for Beech Avenue Park consecutively in 2022 and 2023. “That’s $300,000 that’s been spent and it’s unaccounted for. Where did it go?” Myles asks, demanding an answer from crooked Mayor Restaino.
Cover page of the 2022 RFP for design and development of the Beech Avenue Community Park, issued by the City of Niagara Falls, NY.
Myles, Doss and others question why Mayor Restaino is now pretending that there was never any funding planned for the Beech Avenue Project, when all of the evidence proves otherwise. Says Doss, “Jim Perry says that they’re working on getting funding for Beech Avenue but they just took almost $3 million from ARP money and reallocated it to three parks. Restaino is pissed because he lost the majority of the African American vote over here. I never said anything to piss that man off, this is a punishment.” Those who have known Mayor Restaino personally throughout his life know this is true of his character. Whenever he does not like the outcome, he will change the rules to suit his narrative and get his way; just as he has done in the case of the Beech Avenue Project.
Arlene Doss also told the Reporter that Mayor Restaino attempts to control people by choosing who they are allowed to be friends with. Restaino’s own divisive speech in his October 11th address supports Arlene’s astute observation. Says Doss, “Traci Bax kept asking ‘and which project will we have to defund in order to fund Beech Avenue?’ We keep asking, ‘which project did they fund by taking the money from Beech Avenue?!’”
She sighs, before saying “Life would be better if we had a different mayor.” It should disgust readers to learn that while Doss, a 66 year old American veteran, continues to fight for the underprivileged people of our community; Mayor Restaino is calling her and others “professional victims” and telling everyone to “just reject what they’re saying,’ while implying that she and others are dishonest and are being paid off. Think about that while you drink your coffee.
The Reporter attempted to contact Niagara Falls City Council Chairman Jim Perry and Councilman Brian Archie for comment several times. Neither Perry nor Archie responded in time for this publication.