Posted on 03/04/2009 1:15:14 AM PST by appleseed
New Rochelle, NY offers a window into how President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package – the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 - is fairing at the municipal level where your tax dollars will flow from government to the private sector.
New Rochelle is the seventh largest city in New York State. Last week, city officials submitted a nearly $100 million list of proposed projects to Albany in the hopes of getting a slice of New York State's $24 billion share of the stimulus pie.
Out of the $97.8 million submitted, almost 20% of the projects are ineligible, few are actually shovel-ready and most contain highly improbably job creation estimates.
The list consists primarily of long dormant or unworkable plans coupled with goodies for real estate developers, dumped into a nearly nine-figure grab bag of spending initiatives that will do little to stimulate the economy.
They would do a lot to keep favored contractors working on the federal dime, however, while delivering the goods for deep-pocketed developers who have pumped thousands of dollars into New Rochelle Mayor Noam Bramson's campaign fund.
Mixed in among some genuine, qualifying infrastructure projects can be found items like a skating rink for $8 million, a boat storage facility for the cash-strapped yachting crowd, $1.5 million for soccer fields, basketball courts and picnic tables, more for bike paths and something called "streetscapes" to improve the look of the old downtown shopping area.
This in a city that has given away tens of millions of dollars in the form of tax abatements to encourage big box stories like Costco, Home Depot and Linens & Things to relocate far from downtown on the site of the old city dump.
(Excerpt) Read more at dcexaminer.com ...
Money that does not exist.
How about this?
Another $25 million is to build 228 apartments in order to "maintain an affordable housing resource in the City of New Rochelle in perpetuity." That is a lot of money so that lower-income people can live forever in one of the most affluent, most heavily taxed counties in the U.S. This while the biggest problem facing the country is a glut of abandoned housing in places like Phoenix and Las Vegas. Why not take that 25 million dollars and offer these families a fistful of plane tickets to the sunny southwest and $100,000 each to buy their own home?
Common sense is dead!
Don't forget the "Think Tanks"!
Rob and Laura cry..
Good thinking! Shovel ready to them probably ment taking the pooper scopper along on a walk in the park.
As one who has been participating in this fiasco, I can say that the job creation criteria has fallen of the radar. The local conference of governments (COG) that my city participates in originally submitted in excess of $28 million in projects then we were told that our area would get about $5.6 million. Some of the other things we were told was that the State of Washington was forming a “truth squad” to evaluate whether projects were actully shovel ready, and if they weren’t then the COG would lose the estiamted money the project would cost as a penalty.
In the end most of the projects submitted are asphalt overlays as they are the only type of projects that can be processed and ready for bid within the given 120 day time limit as they are categorically exempt from the environmental review process...
The city I work for has requested $150,000 to repair a badly deteriorated intersection...
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