barnes badgered

This is hilarious.

The shouting match part, I mean.

Regarding the actual news in the story: Are we expected to believe that Barnes had already decided to budget for the maintenance of roads before the Chamber of Commerce released a damning report which revealed we have a $3.2 billion backlog of unfinished capital improvement work? A report that the Chamber had to essentially leak to the press because they knew she and her lackey Steve Glorioso would work to kill or bury it?

Please.

So what I want to know is, why is she doing it now? If it's so important to fund maintenance, why hasn't she been doing it all along? Why did she and her rubber-stamp City Council repeatedly cut funding for maintenance of streets, sidewalks, sewers, etc year after year?

To me, the answer is obvious. She and her Yes Men/Women on the Council have been shoveling our tax dollars into the fat, rich mouths of greedy developers and their attorneys.

But what I really want to know is why the Star continues to print her boilerplate comment:

“Neighborhood concerns and economic development are bonded together,” she said. “You don’t have to pit one against the other.

“To address neighborhood and social concerns, you need to generate economic development to do it. The other option is raising taxes.

“Be alert to anyone sending a message: ‘We’ve done enough economic development and we need to focus on neighborhoods.’ We can do both.”

I mean, I understand why they print her quote. But why don't they contextualize it with some facts? Like, why don't they point out that tax revenues are flat, and that we're losing population? Both of these are pretty strong indications that the so-called economic development strategy ain't working.