Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory is getting a little touchy. All of his rah-rah cheerleading for Uptown is not having the desired effect. City councilman Michael Barnes suggested that maybe city government should turn its attention to other parts of the city besides Uptown. McCrory shot back that the rest of Charlotte gets plenty of attention, like police. Seriously.

In other words, as long as somebody is there to answer 911, shut up and take it. Shut up and take the mad, publicly-subsidized redevelopment schemes, the $500 million choo-choo train, and the Uptown first, last, and always mindset of your elected officials. And to prove he is really serious, McCrory says he wants to “study” the Uptown tax revenue stream and how it is spent, evidently in service of proving what a great deal Uptown is for the rest of the city.

Save it, Pat. We all know Uptown throws off millions and millions of dollars in tax revenue. The property tax base alone with the commercial buildings is huge. Let’s even stipulate that Uptown is a net gain for outlying neighborhoods, although weighed against all the retail across the county might make it pretty close. Big deal.

More specifically, big frickin’ deal. That’s the way things should work, Pat. We have the big shiny buildings Uptown to help us have better lives; we don’t live our lives to have big shiny buildings Uptown. At least most of us don’t.

And there is something fundamentally twisted about assuming that government officials need to look first to the needs of the rainmakers and money-shakers. We already have a state government that does that. It should not matter if you pay $1 million in tax or $1,000, your government exists to serve you and deliver fundamental, basic services. Police. Fire. Roads. Schools.

But Pat McCrory and the Uptown crowd want to jump the million-dollar players to the front of the line, maybe for some VIP action in the form of museums and Uptown attractions. We don’t need a half-assed study to show us that.

A better use of the mayor’s time would be to stop his spin machine and spend a few hours with the city budget and come up with his own mayor’s mark that delivers basic city services without raising the property tax rate. That would be the best thing for both Uptown and the neighborhoods.