Senior Citizens to Blame for Niagara Falls’ Woes Says Mayoral Candidate Seth Piccirillo
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By: Frank Parlato
Analysis
Niagara Falls Democratic candidate for Mayor, Seth Piccirillo, 37, took to Social Media to pin down the cause of the problems faced by Niagara Falls.
It’s senior citizens.
Responding to an elder critic of his, Piccirillo wrote, “My generation is dealing with the terrible decisions of your generation of leadership. Internet comments don’t mask that stark fact. We are cleaning up those messes, while you criticize with misleading half truths.”
Piccirillo was appointed by Mayor Paul Dyster to head Community Development and Code Enforcement and is Dyster’s handpicked successor.
Piccirillo is one of the highest paid city hall workers with a salary with benefits well over $100,000.
Most seniors in Niagara Falls live on a fixed income of around $30,000 per year.
Nowhere has Piccirillo pointed out that the city’s current $12 million annual budget deficit occurred on his and Dyster’s watch.
As bad as senior citizens are in this community – according to Piccirillo – at the end of the administration of the last mayor, a senior citizen named Vince Anello – there was a surplus of $6.7 million.
In 12 years, Dyster and Piccirillo blew up a budget – larded with $100,000 salaries and boondoggle expenditures – that is now $12 million more than what the city takes in. The city has a $100 million plus annual budget serving less than 47,000 people – making it one of the most expensive governments in the US for a city this size.
But is it really senior citizens and their “disastrous decisions” of the past that caused the present crisis in Niagara Falls?
If so, hopefully, these same seniors will not make yet another disastrous decision and fail to go to the polls on June 25 and vote to get Piccirillo out of city hall.
Imagine him blaming senior citizens – many of whom are trying to stay afloat on fixed incomes, while Dyster has a spending spree party. He spent over $200 million of casino cash with almost nothing to show for it. He raised taxes to the point that the city now has the highest property tax rates in New York, along with the highest crime rate.
Yet Piccirillo says, “My generation is dealing with the terrible decisions of your generation of leadership.”
If Piccirillo really wants to look at who caused the present crisis – he might look in the mirror and at the man who hired him and now desperately wants him to become the next mayor.
