Yeah, so CATS spent $84,000 more than the Charlotte city council explicitly told CATS to on CATS’ new offices. City council went ahead and rubber-stamped the spending anyway — had no choice, you see, otherwise the city would’ve had to spend $400,000 to get out of a lease for the space. Neat trick there by City Manager-Until-June Pam Syfert. A favorite in fact.
Didn’t work in the case of the speeding camera program, which cost the city $500,000 to get out of after state law outlawed the program. But had city council tried to end it — well, you see, that would have cost $500,000, and we cannot do that.
This is why it is so amusing to hear council members rant and rave like they do not know what is going on. Cue Democrat Michael Barnes:
“It is a matter of principle for me. I think somebody needs to go home. I don’t know who that person is, or who those people are. Somebody needs to be fired, this was not right. We had very clear instructions about what we wanted and what we expected and somebody decide they were going to do something different,” said Michael Barnes.
Yes, exactly.
Syfert and her gang — CATS honcho Ron Tober especially — build-in all these little poison pills to effectively make it impossible to rollback government spending or change policy. We are going to see it in a big way when it becomes clear that there will be a repeal of the half-cent transit tax on the ballot. Tober ran out and bought a fleet of empty buses to drive around Charlotte to use up part of the $50 million a year in revenue the tax throws off. Now — can’t kill the transit tax, the city has to pay for the buses.
Sorry. Sell them off on eBay. No more good money after bad.
