Stop the Nonsense Indeed...

By now you have probably read about or noticed the yard signs for the “Stop the Nonsense” campaign directed at the City Council by the Heavy Constructors Association(with Steve Glorioso at the helm). When you consider that the mayor’s current budget proposal allows for a $12M dollar decrease in capital maintenance(roughly the same amount of cash taxpayers will hand over to shore up the debt payments on the P&L District)from last year this seems to be a reasonable issue campaign put forth for the great good of the city. $35M is not sufficient to shoulder the necessary maintenance of our roads, bridges, sidewalks and countless other fundamental assets. I’m sure we can all agree that the campaign being put forth by the Heavies is clearly one of self interest, but it may also be mutually beneficial to K.C. residents. Enter the politicos…

On Thursday 3/4/10 ordinance no. 100177 sponsored by Council members: Sharp, Riley, Ford, Jolly and Curls, is on the agenda for the Transportation & Infrastructure committee. The ordinance suggests amending the city charter in order to create a Capital Projects Department. Sounds great to me because what we need at City Hall is some additional bureaucracy. The suggestion is that the current model of distributing funds for and managing capital projects is too fragmented and inefficient and to solve that we should add another cook to the kitchen. While I agree that there are certainly efficiencies to be gained; rather than further complicate the process why not look at ways to streamline the workflow between individual departments and the Capital Improvement Program. There are certainly synergies that exist with engineering, contract management etc. that should allow the city to operate as a holistic organization instead of individual silos and without handing over responsibility for a large chunk of our budget to council member who is staring at term limits and would like to continue receiving a paycheck from the city.