Hot Air

When I was Mayor of Albuquerque and people were lining up to get their projects put on the bond issue election you just had to more or less stand out of the way in a give and take sort of way.  I always disliked each city councillor putting funds in for little police substations in their neighborhoods.  It sucked away money from real needs and the little stations required taking officers off the streets to staff them.  Mostly, they are useless.  But trying to fight them was always a loser because each councillor wanted one as a monument to themselves and they always voted unanimously to approve them.  It is just one of those pork barrel things.  A veto by the Mayor would have been over ridden instantly and the councillors had already reserved several million for each of their projects anyway.

I would like to be the fly on the wall on who convinced the council to put $500K in the upcoming bond election for a "lost balloonist" memorial at the Balloon Museum.  That Museum was a legacy of the Marty Chavez administration and is the biggest white elephant in the city infrastructure.  No one goes there.  And now they want to sink another 500K into it in hopes it might attract a few more visitors?

This is government pandering at its worse and I can think of a few better things to spend that money on.  Like a new training system at the Police Academy that keeps officers from shooting people unnecessarily.  The problem is many times the bad ideas are locked into a category that also has good ideas included.  So usually you have to vote yes.