Grandinetti offers openness on a city council shrouded in secrecy

By Anna Howard

The Niagara Falls Reporter continues to catch flack for recommending Kristen Grandinetti for council chairwoman. We recommended, not once, but twice, that she be given the big chair in the council chambers. Why’d we do that?

Frankly, it’s because we see her as a breath of fresh air on a utterly stifling council. On a council that has had, consecutively, two chairmen that have been truth challenged lackeys to a truth challenged mayor, we see Ms. Grandinetti as honest…honest to a fault.

She’s occasionally been misguided and she’s been poorly thought out any number of times. But we’ve never found her to be dishonest or willfully misleading. On a city council that’s defiantly non-transparent we find her openness to be refreshing and welcome.

We’ve heard that Mayor Paul Dyster is working behind the scenes to keep either councilmen Andrew Touma or Charles Walker – since two men are seen as more predictable, “team players.”

Does that make the mayor a misogynist? No of course not.

True every fake liberal progressive Democratic politician touts the presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton – because she is a woman – but simply blocking the humble ascendancy of Kristen Grandinetti to council chairwoman does not mean it has anything to do with her being a woman.

It has to do with her being honest, we feel.

Whatever her opinion is – she says it.

Here at the Reporter – 99 percent of the time we disagree it.

50 percent of the time it gets her in trouble with some people.

But we know where she stands.

At least when she says something we can rely on the fact that she is telling the truth and the reasons she gives are reasons she believes.

There is another reason: Council members Walker and Touma have had their turns.

Walker has been chairman several times.

Touma became chairman in his second year.

The other two council members Ezra Scott and Russ Thomkins are brand new and would not qualify for chairman as rookies.

Grandinetti has been a council member for six years.

Of course it’s her turn.

So why is this even subject to debate?  Is it because she will speak out if she sees something amiss?

That she won’t play along with everything the administration wants?

Because she might be unpredictable? She might say what she means? Might not be in it just for herself?

Almost every council member of recent memory has made a fine effort to feather his nest, to curry favor with power, with those who can help his career.

Grandinetti seems to vote for what she thinks is right.  (It doesn’t matter that we disagree with many things she votes for).

It is too easy to say she is being ignored, or sidestepped for chairman because she is a woman.

We don’t think her gender has anything to do with the behind the scenes machinations by Touma, Walker and Dyster to place someone in the chairman’s seat who happens to be a man.

We believe if Grandinetti was willing to do back-door politicking – that ‘scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours;’ if she were little less of an idealist – her being a woman chairperson would be fine.

In a nation that is increasingly surrendering to liars as elected officials (is there anyone who thinks Hillary is honest?) and in a city that has been basically swindled into poverty because of lying politicians, isn’t it better to have someone honest?

The Reporter endorses, for a third time, Kristen Grandinetti for 2016 chairwoman. We trust that her fellow council members will do the right thing and present her with the gavel for the coming year.