“the city’s director of the Economic and Community Development Department”
I remember how wildly I laughed at an editorial by Paul Krugman where he complained (and I can only paraphrase his idea not his exacts words) how in the past (some bygone era) taxpayers were not so stingy at funding the “basic services” of state and local government.
As the title above shows: If ONLY they were simply providing the “basic services” they were intended to provide (and, I might add, not paying lavish benefits to provide them).