City of Niagara Falls, N.Y.

  Mayor Paul Dyster's State of the City Address - March 15th, 2012

City Council members, fellow public officials, department heads, community leaders and activists, ladies and gentlemen--- good evening and thank you for joining me for my 2012 State of the City address. Today is March 15, the "Ides of March" in the Roman calendar, a date made infamous in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. I don't know if that's a good omen, and I'm not superstitious, but it does give me an incentive to keep my audience happy by keeping the speech short. I was reflecting earlier that only a month ago today, a tragedy unfolded in our own Hyde Park—one that illustrates the resiliency of the bond we have as a community of PEOPLE. A 70-year-old man was walking his three beloved golden retrievers when one ran on to the ice that had formed on Hyde Park Lake. The man chased after the dog, fell through the ice, and even after a valiant effort to save him, was pronounced dead just three hours later from drowning. But even in that very sad event, we saw glimpses of kindness and courage. There were the city firefighters, trained to run into harm's way to help others, who risked their lives by going out into the frozen lake to try to rescue him. Even after he had been pulled from the freezing water, the firefighters went back in to make sure no one else had gone under. In a world where it has become only too common for passers-by to "not want to get involved," two young boys had the decency and presence of mind to immediately call 911 when they saw the accident happen. And then there was the family—the family of a firefighter, I might add—that chose to adopt the three dogs after their owner was lost.

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