Breaking news: Niagara Falls City Council votes against cutting the mayor’s salary.

This was a smart move for the council, and a move that I completely agree with after knowing the facts.

While a 10% pay cut for the mayor sounded like a good posterity move in our current financial crisis, there was a caveat hiding in the resolution.

That caveat was that it would not take effect until 2020.

To put that into perspective, the next mayoral election is 2019. While it is not known for sure whether or not Mayor Paul Dyster plans to run for a fourth term (which would tie him with O’Laughlin as longest-serving mayor), should he not run, a councilman is likely to take his place.

While cutting the part-time council salary from around $12,000 to $10,000 also ran around, that cut has less of an effect on the actual councilmen, a cut from the mayor’s full time salary (from around $78,000 to $72,000) would hurt a bit.

Also, waiting for the cuts until 2020 does nothing to stop the bleeding that has stirred up stress in the last year.

Finally, all of these salary cuts were expected to save around $16,000, which against a $91 million budget, looks like chump change (or more likely, one pickup truck for DPW).

Of course, the council will need to find ways to fill the gap, and it will be interesting to see what they come up with.
-Sheepie ❤