39° and Overcast
(Editor’s note: Each week, Niagara Falls Mayor Bob Restaino elucidates the good, bad and ugly of our fine city offering a combination of useful information, weather forecasts, traffic safety tips and airing grievances. The Express listens and transcribes for the benefit of voters. He likes to beat around the bush so we can only assume the union leader to whom he took offense was Tim Huether and the paper, and issue is the Gazette. As always, this transcription is offered without comment but with subheads.)
Leaf Pickup
Last week I provided the city leaf pickup schedule and obviously snow put things in a different trajectory. It may be pushed out a few days.
How to report a streetlight outage
We have almost completed the conversion of streetlighting in the city. If you have a power outage at your home that is a National Grid call. An RFP is out for a vendor to service the lights. In the interim, if a light is out, call 716-286-4948 to report a problem.
Please remember this conversion is saving the city $1 million per year in service costs let alone the reduction in electrical usage because of the upgraded lights.
About the crazies
“I want to assure people we have some pretty crazy characters out there that make statements that if you think about it logically just don’t make sense. They are sort of up there with the statements that were made about immigrants eating domestic dogs and cats, again, nonsense.
“So it is nonsense to think that any of our departments, or any member of this administration would make a determination either based on how you voted or how whether somebody likes or doesn’t like a particular business district.
“We work with all of the particular business districts to the extent that they come to us with a particular issue that they would like us to assist them with. In terms of the development of business districts, our business associations take that seriously.
We work hard at that. In the terms of the streets themselves, we work hard at that. Cleanliness is really a function of storeowners like your house, you maintain your home.
In discussions with business associations, they understand it is the business owner’s obligation to keep their storefront tidy and free of snow or leaves or whatever so we work with them to make sure that happens.
Beating up Tim Huether
“Any suggestion on social media by people who choose to present themselves as either former public officials, current people working in government that decisions are made based on some preposterous measuring stick, it is just not true.
“There are no determinations made based on how you voted, who you voted, where you voted. That information isn’t even available. That is what is remarkable about this. So please don’t listen to that stuff.
“It is really a function of some people including some people in union leadership that just think it makes sense to spread false information. You have to consider the source.”
Community Matters, just not to the Gazette
“Finally, you know we constantly are the unfortunate recipients or victims of a local newspaper that just doesn’t want to present the best of our city. You know, right now, you would think that the local paper would be trumpeting the fact that there is over $30 million in public and private investment in North Main Street.
“Think about that for a minute. Over $30 million is going to be invested in a part of the city that has long been dormant. That should be a story that hits every day. Go talk to the people that have seen the promise of that area. Go find people to talk about the potential.
“Help the city, your city in advancing those projects but no, instead, we are going to continue to write silly articles about public funds being used to tend to public property and try to make some sort of nefarious conspiracy about it because I guess they have fun doing it.
“It’s kind of like the people who had fun drawing pictures during the election. It is amazing how adults can be so childish in what they do.
“But I know that there are many good people in the city who see through all of that and I thank you for your clarity of thinking.”
Celebrate the low tax increase
“Along with all of that, this is budget season for a lot of municipalities so we hear about some of our suburbs exceeding the tax cap. We hear about other cities having tax increases in the 5, 6, 7, 8% range and yet, in the city of Niagara Falls, the proposed tax increase is barely over 1%. Barely.
“Not much of a news story, right? I would think it would be when you think about some of these areas that are facing double digit property tax increases yet again, it’s not important. I guess it’s just not important for the local media to write about those things.”
Refusing the Gazette’s FOIL requests
“Finally, when somebody refuses to do something because maybe there is an obligation and they refuse to do that, what I would like to think is we are not refusing we are just ignoring. And we are ignoring for those reasons I just explained to you. “We are ignoring the fact that you simply don’t want to report those things that we think are important information for residents to know about their city. Instead, you like to kind of make those stories up as you go so there is no refusal, we have just chosen to put the information in the right space and simply ignore what is obviously an outlet that just chooses to try to make as much trouble as they can.
Drive careful. Please pay attention to the fact you are sharing the road.
