Mountain Out of a Mole Hill and a Mole Hill Out of a Mountain

I had to chuckle when I saw the story on the New Mexico Expo in the paper on Sunday. A guy who put on a rodeo at Tingley Coliseum is making a mountain out of a mole hill because two banks of lights weren't turned on for seven minutes before the event began. Despite his filling the coliseum for his events at prices of up to $75 bucks a seat he says he wont come back. As I understand it, everything started on time. He did the same thing two years ago and pocketed ten grand in refunds. Looks like the same thing might happen this time. I would suggest reporters back track this operator to see if this happens regularly at other venues. Maybe he is an honest guy, but I saw this same kind of thing happen at the Convention Center when I was Mayor. The venue operators should do their jobs correctly and as efficiently as humanly possible, but at the same time the 'customers' aren't always right.

Then I see Mayor Marty Chavez try to make a mole hill out of his $65 million dollar deficit mountain at city hall. He says he will not fill 200 vacancies and pull in the belt in other areas. 200 jobs wont save much after the Mayor and Council's spending spree of the last six years. Won't some enterprising journalist look into where Marty threw that money? Will someone check out if the transportation tax we passed ten years ago has really been used as it should have? Or was it used on things the voters didn't approve? $65 million is a big chunk and this will be very painful for the city to handle. It may get worse. When will the legislature and cities work together to widen city revenue options rather than depending on the gross receipts tax for such a large portion of city revenues?