VIDEO: Q & A with professor, activist reflecting on life in Niagara Falls
Sean Q. Kelly, a professor of political science at Niagara University and an active member of the community, will be leaving Niagara Falls to return to the West Coast.
Kelly grew up in Seattle and has accepted a position at a new university, California State-Channel Islands.
He’s leaving because he and his wife are from the West and they’ve wanted to get back there, but not because of any ill will for Niagara Falls, he said.
During his eight years here, Kelly sat on a commission that formulated a new charter for Niagara Falls, which ultimately failed in a referendum, served as director of NU’s Environmental Leadership Institute and was a former chairman of the Restoration Advisory Board for the Lake Ontario Ordnance Works site.
A Democrat, Kelly also actively supported Paul Dyster in his bid for mayor in 2003.
Kelly sat down with the Niagara Gazette to discuss his time here.
QUESTION: Why did you decide to leave?
ANSWER: We had really intended to stay here and then somebody came along and said, well you can keep rank, you can keep tenure, we’ll pay you more money, we have built faculty housing that’s affordable. ... And being a native westerner, I’m going to be a lot closer to home.
Q: You’re from Seattle?
A: Yeah. It’s still 1,200 miles away. But it’s only one airplane ride. ... A lot of it has to do with quality of life issues, in terms of being closer to family.
Q: What is your new position?
A: It’s in political science. I’ll pretty much teach the same stuff there as I do here.
Q: Will you do environmental work there?
A: That’s yet to be seen. They’ve started to build a very strong environmental presence within their biology department, and so I’m hoping that will be a part of what I do there as well.
Their environmental issues there are a little bit different. ... Although there’s a developing hazardous waste/radiation story that’s happening in the area right now. There’s a recycling plant where they’ve found elevated levels of radiation. So, it’s kind of interesting because you sort of think Niagara Falls is this isolated case of problems or the northeast is this isolated case and it’s really not. You can’t go anywhere in America and not find environmental problems of one kind or another, human-caused environmental problems ... which I think is lost on some people here.
We’re not escaping anything. ... We really liked it here. .... There’s no place to run in this country where you’ll get away from these problems.
Q: What do you think you’ll most remember about your time here?
A: Really, there’s so much. It’s been kind of an amazing eight years, really. ... In the eight years that we’ve been here we’ve interacted, met so many people. ... It’s hard to say what I’ll remember most. The RAB experience was certainly memorable.
Q: Did you leave the RAB?
A: Yeah. ... guess I learned even more about working with people that maybe don’t necessarily want to solve problems, that they have other agendas. That was very difficult for me. That was a challenge I will admittedly say I was not up to. I’m used to working with people who want to solve problems. ...
The charter, right up to the vote, was a very proud thing for me.
Q: Any disappointment in that?
A: Yeah, there’s tremendous disappointment in that. I think we missed an opportunity, though not through any fault of our own. I don’t think it was anything that we did. ... A new charter is not the silver bullet. A casino is not the silver bullet. ... It’s a piece of the puzzle. Fixing the charter would help because it would hopefully create a cooperative spirit between the council and the mayor. I understand a certain amount of conflict between the two is necessary, and it’s something that you want. But to have a continuously disfunctionally high level of conflict between those two institutions is not good.
It would have created more cooperation there. I also thought it would have brought more good people into the process, although, we have a lot of good people in this community, and the fact that people will keep coming back and trying to help, is something that I’m very enthusiastic about.
Q: Even with the fact that the mayor’s pay was raised and we still have the same field of candidates?
A: The rest of the field (except for Dyster) is disappointing. For my money there is only one choice for the position. ... Eventually it will (attract other candidates). I think there are some other up and coming young folks who could move into those positions as well.
Q: Is there hope for the region environmentally?
A: People should actually feel pretty good because most of the big environmental threats here have been identified, and many of them have been remediated, to the point where there aren’t probably many big threats that are unknown. Anything that is an imminent threat to any large number of people, there are all kinds of problems left, there is no doubt about that, but I would feel pretty good about the situation here. I don’t think that, despite what some people will say, there is a major threat. ... I think there are some people in the community who want to create worry. ... If I was able to choose where we put our environmental dollars, I’d put them into the river, because that river is water, that water goes into our bodies every day.
I don’t want to minimize it.... Should we be concerned about it? Absolutely. Should we be obsessed with it? I don’t think so.
Q: How has your view of Niagara Falls and the surrounding area changed since you’ve arrived?
A: I think that it’s only improved, really. Because when we first moved here, we didn’t quite know what there was here, other than a job and we found a nice house and a good neighborhood and all that kind of stuff, but we didn’t realize what the state parks had to offer for instance.
When they shut down half the Robert Moses Parkway, what a great thing that was for quality of life.
And Buffalo has a lot to offer culturally. ... It’s just been a process of discovery where we’ve found more and more positives about living here and frankly very few negatives, especially if you add a job.
... I think I’m starting to see sparks of life on Main Street. I think the creation of that public safety building, when and if it happens, will be a spark, because inevitably there has to be at least a few restaurants that open up. ... I don’t think Main Street will ever become what people tell us it was.
... The one thing about this area that has always driven me crazy is the search for the silver bullet ... those things just simply don’t exist. ... You have to have someone out there selling the city.
Q: Are you going to miss anything?
A: Just about everything, really. ... We’ve made terrific friends here. The university has been a pleasant place to work. I have my issues ... my colleagues are great, our house is great, our neighborhood is great. I’ll miss virtually everything except really, really cold, windy weather. But we’ll especially miss our friends and we’ll miss the people. It has been great and we really expected to be here forever.
Q: Was it a hard decision to leave?
A: No, it wasn’t. But that’s not to demean anything about this place. ... Everything that I was offered... was ideal. And we wanted to be in the West for so long.
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