The Spokane City Council this week made a couple of surprise moves- backtracking on implementing a new $20 vehicle tab fee and shifting money away from road plowing and repairs to be spent instead on rewarding departments whose labor unions made wage and benefit concessions.
Council members spent almost a year working out the details of a Local Improvement District (LID) to raise extra money for transportation improvements through the tab fee. At Monday night’s Council meeting, Council President Joe Shogan, who organized the initial work, reportedly wasn’t pleased with the rest of the council allegedly waffling on the decision. Here’s the story from the Spokesman-Review.
What a bunch of cowards.
I think it's more about the politics in play behind the scenes than cowardice. That's why I never run out of chances to use my favorite phrase: 'Moving at the speed of government.' I ran into a former news anchor I used to work with yesterday who recently entered the world of government work. She said she can't get used to the deadlines being so far out and asked how anything gets done. Well, it does get done but there's a whole lot of consensus building that has to be done behind the scenes first so that everyone agrees on the direction a project is headed, everything is done correctly and legally and the general public supports the project. I've been involved in a couple projects where the public hasn't been supportive so it was either scrapped or we had to go back to square one. While it's frustrating, it saves you headaches and lawsuits later to get everyone onboard first.
Many times it boils down to political crap…
Cowardice…