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Tuesday’s Short Take from Niagara Express
Taking today off to prep for 10 days away. We are headed to Nova Scotia/Prince Edward Island and Cape Breton.
We have a dog/house sitter. We are flying out of Hamilton which we assume will be easier than Toronto. Hopefully Gov. Carney doesn’t mess with the FAA or TSA in Canada until after our northern neighbors receive statehood. (OK, that was sarcasm.)
Today’s photo is a squirrel that was aggressively panhandling earlier this spring at the Maid of the Mist dock.
I don’t anticipate paying attention to Wednesday’s city council meeting in real time but I look forward to figuring out where Mayor Robert Restaino is going to find $4 million to pay off Niagara Falls Redevelopment. It is not as big as figuring out where the $250 million needed to build Centennial Park is going to come from but it is a real question.
The Jeopardy category is “Centennial Park.”
“Alex, I will take ‘From where will funding come?’ for $1,000?” My answer? “What is ‘Casino Revenue intended for the hospital and Heritage area.’ ”
Gazette Publisher Cheryl Phillips published a carefully worded column this morning about the paper evolving with the times to no longer offer a print edition on some holidays and to put more content online sooner.
As always, it is a budget cut carefully framed as improvement. Death by 1,000 cuts will continue like the ever-inflating cost of legal advertisements and obituaries.
The paper employs one full-time journalist who lives in Niagara Falls, Mark Scheer, who will continue with his gripping, 487-part series on Niagara Falls Redevelopment as well as the latest good news from the Salvation Army.
The Express doesn’t understand why the paper never seems to write about the $625 million in investment that either has happened or is fully funded around the tourism district, or the $40 million in spending on the books for the Suspension Bridge District, with more to come, but hey, a data center and an unfunded hockey rink are exciting. While the hockey rink doesn't grow the tax base, all those hotel rooms and all of that development on Main Street does.
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