Is the hullabaloo over the Supervisors giving us a $1 mill from ARPA for the new library really warranted? Now we have to indebt ourselves and beg for another two million. There was a grand round of applause for Interim City Administrator Lisa Kotter for her presentation at the request session, which will probably insure that she will be a permanent city administrator.
She is clearly glib and facile, but I fear seriously lacking in sense of democracy—the people’s best interest—which should be her first order of business, not promoted by increasing city bureaucracy and giving grants and rebates to businesses.
Ordinary activities cost people more. A building permit to add a new deck or replace your crumbling steps will currently cost you $25. The city plans to increase it to $250 or more by passing an ordinance that a building inspector from ECIA must OK it before you receive a permit. They charge $50 to come out and do it, and $93 an hour for the inspection. Last week, the office government mileage number was released: 64 cents a mile $33.28. So we see what this is about—bucks for bureaucrats.
To my face, she insisted that was what I wanted. What I objected to was only 3 council people being asked to sign off them by the previous administrator. I walked out because meetings all spring that featured more TIF payments to well-off individuals, a decision that will compromise the integrity of a neighborhood, and more bureaucracy. I was overcome with the sense that this city council will do nothing for ordinary citizens. A few wealthy individuals will benefit massively, most of the rest of us, hardly at all.
Delaney said Tough Toenails! If you buy a house someone will build in front of you, someone will build behind you. Yeah, bonehead if you buy in a subdivision. If you have a 100-year-old house in a 100-year-old neighborhood, it shouldn’t be compromised. People should contemplate what this is doing to their property value.
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