How perfect that on the same day that the Uptown paper of record permits City Manager-for-Life Pam Syfert to deliver a sprawling, 42 column-inch (!!) defense of CATS’ light rail plans overflowing with misdirection and mendacity (more on that shortly) we also learn more details about the Mecklenburg Mills fiasco she oversaw.
The city is out $6 million dollars on the deal while the supposed private developer “partner” in the low-income housing project put in all of $600. Like that deal? There’s more of that coming as the city moves to subsidize “transit oriented development” around the South Blvd. stations.
There is just no more hiding behind the house of cards Syfert has built. The city’s spending priorities are out of whack and getting more skewed everyday. The various little pots of money she set aside for various pet projects from the Westin, to the Uptown Arena, to the transit system, to the NASCAR Hall, to the Wachovia Arts Tower are nothing more than an elaborate shell game designed to deflect criticism of a tax-and-spend regime which puts the incidental ahead of the essential.
Syfert has masterfully played off the city council’s insecurity and lack of attention to detail up to this point. Now members are getting restless and clued into the notion that things may not be as rosy as the Syfert gang has been telling them. But they first have to gnaw through Syfert’s chew toy, Mayor Pat McCrory, before they figure out that Mayor Pat and his rah-rah ways are not the problem.
That should take weeks or months, but this being Charlotte, home of the impossibly credulous Uptown crowd, it might be years before anyone figures out the truth.
