For 12 years I had the honor to serve as your mayor of the City of Niagara Falls. That means I spent a lot of time working with many different City Council members. Some were truly outstanding public servants. Others seemed to be looking out mostly for their own personal agendas, and some were clearly just along for the ride.
It makes a big difference who is serving on the council, and how seriously they are applying themselves to the task. While technically our City Charter mandates a “strong mayor” form of government, not a nickel gets spent except by action of the council, and the five members of the council are uniquely positioned to act as community leaders on any issue that comes before city government. We should all want our mayor to be successful. A strong council helps the mayor — and the city — move forward. A weak council holds us back.
What makes someone a good council member? You might think that as a former mayor, I would say someone who, without question or comment, accepts the policies and priorities of the mayor and votes across the board to implement them. But you would be wrong.
The strongest council members were not “yes-men (or -women).” They were strong individuals in their own right, with their own perspectives on the issues, grounded in their own background, talents and life experiences. They were not “Monday morning quarterbacks,” but people who were well known to those around them as “doers,” not just “talkers.” Getting elected to the council was recognition and reward for a life of community service, not a step up the ladder of their own personal advancement. When an important issue was to be decided, they brought something to the table.
If they agreed with me, great — it reinforced my conviction that I was making the right decision. But if they thought I was headed in the wrong direction, they would try to set me straight — not by grandstanding or making an embarrassing scene, but by the power of their logic and arguments. And because they were serious people, I took their advice seriously. My partnership with them made me a more effective mayor.
There are two candidates for City Council in the November election whose qualifications are well known to me because I had the chance to work with them during my time in office.
I first met Brian Archie through his work with the Create a Healthier Niagara Falls Collaborative, a grassroots organization that was a successor to the mayor’s task force I started to try to address high rates of heart disease, stroke and diabetes in the city. He graduated from Niagara Falls High, earned a bachelor’s degree from Bryant & Stratton, worked at People Power Health, and is now doing outreach work for Niagara University. He serves on the boards of the Housing Authority and Heart. Love & Soul. Through the Collaborative, he has experience working on issues involving food deserts, park access and senior citizens, and can be found doing his thing at some community event or another most weekends. And he has six kids — you can’t get much more grounded in the community than that.
I met Jim Perry during his time as an administrator at the Niagara Falls Water Board. The mayor doesn’t run the Water Board, but a strong relationship with the people who do is obviously very important. I could tell right away Jim was a strong asset for the board. A Trott graduate, he had served in the Army before pursuing a long career at Goodyear, where he rose to the position of human resources manager. At the Water Board, he served as director of administration. I was impressed that he was able to untangle a very thorny situation involving union contracts in a way that protected the ratepayers while giving the workers a fair shake. That’s not an easy balance to strike, as I can attest. For someone who has held positions of great responsibility in both the private and public sectors, Jim is a very down-to-earth guy. Like me, he’s a member of the LaSalle Sportsman’s Club, and one of his hobbies is riding a motorcycle, which I don’t think he plans on giving up anytime soon!
Since my retirement as mayor, I haven’t played a very active role in politics. But I want to see the city move forward and be successful. For that, we need not only strong leadership in the mayor‘s office but a strong council. Jim and Brian, people with very different backgrounds but a shared commitment to community service, would make great partners on City Council. They have my endorsement, and I hope you will give them your vote.
Paul Dyster is the former mayor of the City of Niagara Falls.
