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Health & Fitness

The Politics of Dancing Part II

"Why waste money cleaning up the Village when it will only get dirty again" and other gems from Art Madrid and Ruth Sterling.

City Council Meeting April 10th - Item 8. Parking Meter Money for Centennial Village Clean up.

With Municipal Code 12.56.120 G giving City Council the discretion to use parking meter funds for downtown maintenance and the Downtown Parking Fund bulging with nearly $1M, it is a disgrace that for La Mesa’s Centennial, our Village sidewalks will remain stained and dirty and the streets more littered.

The reasons given against dedicating a miniscule amount of meter money for street sweeping and sidewalk power washing for our Centennial were silly:

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  • The sidewalks will crumble if power washed (Art)
  • I waited too long to pursue meter funds for the Centennial (Art)
  • Why clean up downtown, it will only get dirty again (Ruth)
  • In Europe, shopkeepers plant geraniums, sweep their walks and hose off their sidewalks (Ruth)
  • It’s just not right. It’s just not right. (Ruth)

 

Rubbish: 

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  • The sidewalks would not crumble if power washed. They survive power-washing every October after Oktoberfest.
  • When my plan originated is irrelevant, Council could have voted yes on Tuesday and the clean up would have commenced immediately. For the record, I presented the plan months ago to Council and the Centennial Committee. 
  • If Ruth’s philosophy of why spend money to clean when it’s only going to get dirty again held any water, there would be no Windex, no Hoover uprights and no Swiffer mops.
  • Brooms cannot scrape off black, ground-in chewing gum and stains. It is also illegal to hose off sidewalks. (Federally mandated Clean Water Act). Downtown La Mesa needs professional cleaning, not merchants sweeping and hosing.
  • It is just right. It is just right.

 

Even the argument that $1M will be needed from the parking fund to supplement the $5M Streetscape Project is baseless because by groundbreaking next January, there should be more than $1.3M in the parking fund. The fund couldn’t spare 2.4% of its coffers for our once-in-a-lifetime 100th birthday? Really?

And let's not forget that the same people who say the fund can't afford a loss of up to $32,000 are the same people who deliriously supported $200,000 Village public toilets paid for by meter money. 

The real reason my proposal was jettisoned was politics, as Dave Allan put so succinctly. 

Mayor Art Madrid, champion of the PBID movement, could not risk meter money successfully doing for $32,000 what the PBID promises to do with 10 times that amount. 

Ruth Sterling, running for reelection this year, did not want to give me – a possible challenger for her seat - a victory. In the politics makes strange bedfellows category, you will see in upcoming months, Art and Ruth support each other on numerous La Mesa issues (like Sacramento Drive) and you will see Art endorse Ruth for City Council 2012. 

Suprisingly, and most disappointingly, Ernie Ewin’s vote for restricting meter money to capital projects only, dashed the only chance of quarters paying for the sweeping and power washing of the Village for our Centennial.

What a bummer.

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