Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer came to Niagara Falls last week.
Tagging along with him was newly elected U.S. Rep. Tim Kennedy, the former New York state assemblyman who replaced Brian Higgins as the representative in the 26th Congressional District, which includes Niagara Falls.
The big dilemma: “Flagpoling.”
No, it’s not some weird new sex thing.
It doesn’t involve people hitting each other with flags or poles.
I had to read about it myself to understand it because nobody’s ever heard of it before. Essentially, it’s a bureaucratic “loophole” that lets Canadians get work permits more quickly by driving across an international crossing like the Rainbow Bridge and turning around so their paperwork can get processed more quickly.
Schumer and Kennedy contend all these Canadians turning around is clogging up inspections at the border, leading to longer wait times. Schumer suggested this “flagpoling” hampers commerce between the two sides during the “busy summer tourism season.”
At first glance, I thought: “Good, keep those Canadians on the U.S. side longer. We need the business over here.”
But then the worst part of this non-announcement struck me: The man who is one of the most powerful figures in the U.S. government thinks “flagpoling” is a major problem facing people involved in the tourism business on the U.S. side in Niagara Falls.
Schumer must have missed our recent story on the video of the “real” City of Niagara Falls, which was made by travel writer David Seminara, who is known professionally as “The Mad Traveler.”
I hate to keep harping on it because it makes it sound like self-gloss for having actually written a story people read for a change.
Still, I hope people understand the point isn’t about generating clicks or hits for me or Seminara or this newspaper.
The video matters because it offers an unvarnished look at the city’s once-proud neighborhoods, places where families once lived and homes once stood, places where there are now only vacant lots, boarded-up buildings and blight.
Seminara came at it as a casual observer, pointing the camera on his phone at what he saw.
Some will say, ‘Well, lots of places in America are like that now.’
They’re right.
However, lots of places don’t have what Western New York has: Niagara Falls, one of the most recognized and visited natural wonders in all the world.
It’s not acceptable for a gateway into the United States for millions of people each year to languish in the condition it’s been in for decades now.
To put it another way, as I have in the past, it’s nothing short of a national tragedy.
It’s not Schumer or Kennedy’s fault, of course. They didn’t create it.
However, they continue to do what many in higher levels of government — those serving at the state and federal levels outside of mayor and city council offices — have done for decades now.
They mostly pay lip service to the one place in Western New York that should be driving the economy, a community that often ends up taking a backseat to Buffalo and Erie County, you know, places where people actually vote and where there’s much more campaign money to be had.
Just to be clear, I’’m not knocking Buffalo. To me, Buffalo-Niagara has a chance. Separate and distinct, like the way they have been gets us what we’ve got: cities with tremendous potential that are not growing and are instead marked by neighborhoods where the blight and poverty remain striking to those like Seminara who can’t believe it when they see it.
When I really think about the worst part of Schumer holding a press conference at the Rainbow Bridge to decry a problem nobody in Niagara Falls recognizes as a problem, I think about the city’s so-called “Two-Project Solution” and the deafening silence coming from his office when it comes to talking about it.
Schumer has not weighed in on whether he thinks Niagara Falls Redevelopment will make good on its promise to build a $1.5 billion data center or whether he thinks it makes sense for the city to follow Mayor Robert Restaino’s plan by forging ahead without doing a feasibility study first to acquire NFR’s property at the cost of millions for an arena and events campus that the administration told federal officials would cost $165 million to build.
An aide to Schumer has told me in response to questions about this that it’s not something the Senator would get involved in and it is more a “local matter.”
It’s the same sort of response Gov. Kathy Hochul has given when I’ve asked her directly in the past.
Again, Niagara Falls, New York is not a local matter, or at least it shouldn’t be.
Both projects are being billed as game-changing “solutions.”
Surely, Schumer and Kennedy should know if either has a shot of living up to the billing.
“Flagpoling” is not an ideal situation to have at an international border.
It’s by no means water under the Rainbow Bridge, but it’s not a priority in a community like Niagara Falls, USA where bigger problems and bigger issues require serious attention.
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