And another $20 million is tossed on the light rail bonfire. Does anybody care?
Your elected leaders do not. That is why they voted last night to spend $20 million to acquire land (!?) for an Independence Blvd. light rail line that is unlikely to ever be built. Every reasonable study of that corridor says rail makes no sense — even CATS says so — but your elected leaders led by Parks Helms, as chairman of the Metropolitan Transit Commission, say otherwise.
Mecklenburg is now consumed by rail envy. The 9.6 mile South Blvd. line is not even half-way finished and carries an unknown price-tag, yet other corners of the county got to get themselves one of those choo-choos too. Taken together, the fiscal mismanangement of the South line by CATS and planning mismanagment of the Southeast line by the MTC prove conclusively that transit policy is broken in Mecklenburg. Next up, rail for the Northeast line to UNCC and rail for the I-77 corridor.
The only recourse, it seems, is repeal of the half-cent transit tax. The revenue is simply being wasted — and worse. Handing money to the MTC is like giving a gas can to a pyromaniac.
Update: Recall that the city of Charlotte opted to raise your property taxes because it needed another $4.7 million for police officers — at least that was the cover-story, the added General Fund money was actually needed to make the Wachovia Arts Tower deal work. Anyway, we’ve just voted to spend four times more money buying up private land for a doomed train plan than we spent on hiring police officers to protect this community.
Great priorities, folks. Burn, baby burn.
