Just as in Massachusetts, Niagara was promised streets paved with gold when they endorsed Predatory Gambling, ignoring the evidence.
How'd that go for ya?
Abandoned Church Fire in Niagara Falls, New York
A 100 year old abandoned church in Niagara Falls, New York caught fire in an impoverished neighborhood. The fire rages for 3 days, the building had to be completely demolished. A grassy plot not sits where the church used to. Side note, the other burned up/abandoned buildings next to the church were burned and abandoned long before the church burned down, a tell tale sign of the level of poverty in the area....
September 1, 2012
City of Niagara Falls deep in the red
NIAGARA FALLS — The city’s fund balance ended 2011 with a deficit of $844,000.
An accountant hired to review the year-end books for 2011 told city lawmakers Thursday the number was a reflection of the uncertainty surrounding casino revenue the municipality is owed but has not received in years.
During a meeting at City Hall, Randall Shepard, an accountant from the city’s outside auditing firm, Bonadio and Co., presented his firm’s audit of the municipality’s 2011 financial statements.
Shepard said there are a number of reasons the fund balance ended in the negative, but the main
reason involved accounting procedures. In previous years, the firm and the city have counted anticipated casino revenues when calculating the fund balance, but this year those funds were not counted.
Shepard said casino revenue was not factored into the audit because of the length of time the city has been waiting for the estimated $58 million it is owed. Those funds have been tied up as a result of an ongoing dispute between the state and the Seneca Nation of Indians.
There is $8,631,000 in the fund balance, but all of that money is tied up in restricted and committed funds, meaning those dollars have already been spent, Shepard said. There is also a line for “unassigned” funds in the audit which is $844,000 in the negative.
“That doesn’t mean that it’s not owed to you or that it’s not going to be counted as revenue at some point, but that’s how we treat it in the revenue category here,” Shepard said.
Shepard recommended that the city look closely at its spending when putting together next year’s budget.
“I think the biggest issue is looking at the things that are within your disposal with the city from a spending perspective and making sure that budgeting streams are realistic and available in terms of cost in the long run,” Shepard said.
During the presentation, Councilman Robert Anderson asked Shepard if he saw a control board in the city’s future.
Shepard said that he was in no position to say whether the state would install a board to oversee the city’s finances in the future, adding that “a control board is something that I wouldn’t wish on anybody.”
Mayor Paul Dyster said that the negative fund balance looks bad, but that once the casino funds are factored in again it won’t seem so bleak.
“[The casino funds] are still being counted as receivable, but they’re not being counted as receivables in the short term,” Dyster said.
The city has been acting conservatively with casino funds since they started receiving the money in 2008, Dyster said. Instead of taking out bonds against the money guaranteed to the city in the gaming compact to use for a large-scale project it has been using a pay-as-you-go strategy for capital improvement projects such as roads, Dyster said.
The city did bond for the Public Safety Complex on Main Street after the state required the city to build it without providing the funding to do so, Dyster said. The bond puts a heavy burden on the city’s budget - more than $5 million each year - though the city hasn’t been getting the casino funds it had planned to use to repay the bond, Dyster said.
“For the most part what we’ve done is pay-as-you-go for other capital projects,” Dyster said. “We’ve limited our bonding to $3 million per year.”
Dyster said the city expects to get the casino revenues it is owed and it would have been bad planning if the city hadn’t budgeted the use of those funds.
“We are owed these monies,” Dyster said. “Somebody owes us $58 million in the view of the city of Niagara Falls.”
Dyster views the language of the original gaming compact as weak and hopes that, as a result of an ongoing arbitration process, the state and Senecas will have a more firm written agreement in place soon. He and other local officials would also like host communities like Niagara Falls to be paid directly in the future.
“Everyone at a local level has agreed that we would much rather see a direct payment to the municipality than the formula in which the funds pass through the state,” Dyster said.
Council Chairman Sam Fruscione described the numbers in the year-end 2011 audit as troubling. He declined comment when asked about the current state of the city’s finances and the prospects for the 2013 budget. Fruscione said he’d have more to say once Dyster’s budget proposal is formally presented to the council later this year.
“This is an indicator that the worst is coming,” Fruscione said of Thursday’s report from the auditor.
Fruscione indicated that he was not in favor of any tax hikes next year.
“I do not support raising the property tax cap at all right now,” Fruscione said. “But, I need to see what the budget is first.”
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