We break from our All Jim Black format to note this whopper……..
The Uptown paper of record today provides the best argument yet for getting rid of the half-cent transit tax. The paper does not mean to, of course, but that is the effect of yet another defense of CATS and light rail.
Fretting that the latest cost overrun — the $84,000 one on CATS’ offices — “needlessly handed critics of the Charlotte Area Transit System and the South Corridor Light Rail line a baseball bat and invited them to pound away,” the Observer explains that the “greatest harm may be collateral damage to public confidence in the South Corridor Light Rail line project. That project isn’t even connected with the office space bungle. Yet here’s more ammunition for critics to point to as reason to flush a public venture that’s critical to Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s future.”
Light rail is just critical to Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s future, and must be built no matter what — no matter the cost, no matter the mismanagement, no matter the changes in zoning and density required to support it.
Given this viewpoint, dogma actually, the only possible way to exercise any fiscal control over light rail, let alone flush it, is to cut off its funding source.
….we now return to the Jim Black Show, already in progress.
