After five years of our City leaders dreaming, planning, prevaricating, deficit spending and taxing, the Enquirer has just in the past 60 days repeatedly come out in full-throttled opposition to the foolish Streetcar project. Until then they have been silent about the biggest public capital project in this City since the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.
One day before losing the "conscience of the community" behind a firewall, the gray lady (the paper, not Mrs. Buchanan) has this bold clarion call to stop the insanity.
The highlights:
It’s time to pull the plug on the streetcar....
But it’s become clear there’s no sound plan to finance it. It’s a patchwork being stitched together a piece at a time. The pieces are now starting to come from other obligations, areas that are more urgent and would benefit more people....
The sale of the airport will bring $37 million to the city. That money is a windfall to a city that is falling behind on street and bridge maintenance and has other pressing capital needs, such as parks and police stations....It's almost like these words might have come off of COAST's keyboard.
Those kinds of growth projections might seem optimistic in the best of times. These days, it’s almost cavalier....
We need to get off this train to nowhere.
Music to our frugal ears.
We might remind Enquirer readers and Cincinnati taxpayers that Mayor Mallory and his merry band of thieves have already spent more than $20 million to date on planning the streetcar, buying the bus barn, and sundry and assorted bells and whistles before the actual streetcars and tracks are purchased. $20 million already down the pisser.
[As if COAST did not need yet another reason to oppose Cincinnati's Issue 4, the proposal to extend Council terms between elections (we call those accountability sessions).]
In any event, as we have said before, "welcome to the Party."
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