So by 2010, the city will be faced with a deficit of $42 million and Seattle Schools still has a long way to go in chipping away at its $25 million hole.
And we continue forward with massive, pie-in-the-sky projects that don't help Washington state as a whole: Billions of President Barack Obama's stimulus money going toward the Hanford clean up; $7 million set aside for a fence to keep people from jumping off of Aurora Bridge; and a multi-billion-dollar plan to reduce a primary eight-laned arterial, the Alaskan Way Viaduct, into a mini, two-lane-each way version of itself underground.
People, we are in trouble.
While it is true that "you get what you pay for," what we've been paying for isn't helping us as a community much at all. We have hundreds of supposed administrators shuffling papers and spouting politics and getting paid quite well, mind you, and for what? So the few can benefit? (The few being the developers who are already casting their shadows over gold mine that is the viaduct land. You think Vancouver has a lot of condos? You ain't seen nothin' yet).
And how is cleaning up Hanford, a good thing to do of course, going to "stimulate" the economy? It won't. How will a $7 million fence keep people from killing themselves? It won't. We're resourceful, don'tcha know. And how will a smaller arterial help a growing city? It won't. In Seattle, we need some courageous, unsullied leadership and hopefully, come November, we'll get some.[[In-content Ad]]
