Dysfunctional government continues

The tit-for-tat that is the dysfunction of Niagara Falls government continues Friday with a 5:30 p.m. special meeting at city hall.

Here’s the way the cycle works:

1. The mayor puts an item on the agenda. Supporting documents for a meeting are released to the council about 72 hours ahead and to the public within 36 hours or so.
2. Councilmember Jim Perry meets with the mayor, discusses what he’s thinking and agrees to support whatever he wants.
3. Other council members either don’t have the time or don’t make the effort.

Then the regular city council meeting happens. Council members don’t have enough information to make an informed decision. No one from the administration other than Acting Corporation Counsel Tom DeBoy, serving a term in one of the levels of Dante’s Hell is present to answer questions.

The council postpones decisions on important things like paving, fixing potholes or settling a lawsuit. The mayor answers tit with tat by calling a special meeting.

In the public speaking portion of the meeting, members of citizenry, often even less informed than the council, make impassioned pleas about processes they don’t understand.

Union President Tim Huether, seeing a monster named Mayor Restaino under every bed, asks pertinent questions like “how come the new paving equipment is still parked and our guys are filling potholes, and it’s July? Why was this RFP not out in April? Or How come we are awarding a bid for supplemental mowing in July? Didn’t we know the grass was going to grow.”

No one is there to provide an answer from the administration and the council can't respond. It makes the legislative branch look incompetent and uninformed. It makes the executive branch look feckless.

The agenda for Friday’s meeting is attached on today’s Express but includes:

1. Approval of the delayed paving contract.
2. Settling the lawsuit over Centennial Park
3. Approving supplemental grass mowing because public works can’t find regular or clean team workers.
4. Delaying the implementation of the new zoning law designed to legislate student housing out of DeVeaux for a third year because the proposed new Niagara University dorms and apartments on Main Street are nowhere near beginning construction.

Today, the Express will sit with the Mayor again for an hour, and ask him about all these things, even the ones that make him uncomfortable.

Sometime, perhaps by Monday, the Express will share what he had to say. Not because we agree but because he deserves to be heard. We elected him Mayor, he wants to be reelected and no one else in the media seems able to talk to him for more than  two minute phone call.