And if you want some more information for the brains at City Hall here is one more.
"After five years of construction the original $20 million dollar suburban expressway had morphed into an $89 million urban corridor.
Ward 7 Alderman, Druh Farrell, says it's not fair to treat the evolution of the project as a single plan.
"It was outdated thinking," says Farrell. "Really, it was a whole new project."
A recent city auditor's report was critical of how the 16th avenue expansion was managed.
"City council failed in leadership, even after the shovels were already in the ground," says Nenshi of the auditor's report.
Considering the rising cost of construction during the boom , Nenshi says the cost overruns were not terrible."
How many businesses along 16th Avenue were forced out of business because of incompetence from city hall? I can find you many more instances where they treat the tax payers as their own personal bank if you want, including the $25M pedestrian bridge that was committed to without a bid process and was installed improperly in the beginning. No doubt we needed a bridge at that location (according to Druh for sure) but there were much more budget worthy options available.
Because certain people choose to have bike lanes, art work etc., does not mean that others, myself included, wish to see our tax money spent on projects like those. I would prefer that city investment went to projects that are planned and budgeted correctly and provide a real addition to making us the world class city we should be, not pet projects. If the East Village is considered one of these projects then the same consideration of city infrastructure upgrades, tax incentives and actual city input should be allotted for the West Village also.
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