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Posted by D Sherman [72.47.9.228] on Friday, July 23, 2010 at 00:24:28 :
We got an "economic stimulus" project going in Wallace now. Most of the residential streets are full of chuck-holes, the curbs are crumbling, most of the retaining walls on the South hill are rotting away and one street is closed as a result. Our 100+ year old brick sewers need a lot of work. The historic railing between the old highway (business loop) and the river is crumbling away to nothing.
But what do they do for a "stimulus" project? They tear out all the perfectly good one-slot wheelchair ramps on all the downtown street corners and replace them with two-slot ramps. The ramps were put in as part of an LID for new sidewalks, paid for solely by the downtown property owners, 15 years ago. None of the wheelchair ramps even had a crack in it. Now, the powers that be have decided that the best thing they can spend money on in Wallace to "stimulate" the economy is to replace one-slot ramps with two-slot ramps. The two slots don't even directly face the crosswalks, but they sort of angle out midway between the corner and the sidewalks.
Not only is this a colossal waste of money, but the downtown shopkeepers are furious because we only have about a 2-month tourist season and now they have everything torn up with construction signs all over to basically tell the tourists to turn around and get back on the freeway. The Federal Government is selling our soul to the Chinese and Arab financiers so we can "stimulate" the economy by replacing 15 year old wheelchair ramps with new ones? It makes me wonder what all the other "stimulus" projects around the country are. It's just sickening, and even if we "throw the bums out" this fall, there's no reason to think the new bums will be any better. Oh, and along with the Feds benevolence in replacing all our 1-hole wheelchair ramps with 2-holers, starting in 2011 we're going to have to give a 1099 to everyone we ever bought $600 worth of anything from in the course of the year. Won't this be a lovely pile of paperwork? Then the IRS can match the 1099 we file with whatever the seller did or didn't declare and one or both of us will have to explain the difference.
Okay, I ranted. Joe, if you want to delete this, please go right ahead.
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