By the way...

Today's remarkable development in the City's long and painful Streetcar saga of Roxanne Qualls breaking ranks (see below) with the City Administration is met with this remarkable attempt by Qualls to retrench on the Streetcar issue, if only temporarily:

Qualls recommended that Dohoney hire “a project manager and/or team that has a proven record in bringing major construction projects in on time and on budget.”

But, note that the City has employed Chris Eilerman for nearly thirty months as the Construction Manager for the Streetcar project.  Read about it here.

And the brilliant  engineers at Parsons Brinckerhoff, Inc. have been on the team for more than 42 months as Project Manager.  These are the same Einsteins who brought us the $42 million Riverfront Transit Center, a vacant rail station right in front of and underneath Great American Ballpark that opened in 2002 and sits unused to this day.  Read about it here.

And note here that since last July, SORTA has employed a full-time rail manager for its role in the system that will not start, at the earliest, until 2016. 

So, have our elected officials and our bureaucrats led us astray with crappy project managers all these months and years?  And now they are going to hire someone who has a "proven record?" 

Give us a freaking break.