Council isn’t going to pay as much for signs as city staff requested.
Sideblog
- Downtown tarot card reader Ed Rowe passed away on NYE; a memorial service will be held Wed. 01/07 from 5-8PM at Twisted Branch. #
- The DP illustrates a 30% drop in UVa's endowment with a graph that gets 58% smaller. Not a lot of statisticians go into the news biz, I guess. #
- There's an E85 station in Albemarle now. #
- Urban Outfitters to open up in the old Hardware Store. Ugh. The very worst of Old Town Alexandria, right here in C'ville. #
- Wistar and Darren's spider on frog on turtle photo keeps getting more famous. #
- Trish took some photos of an albino deer, or perhaps a piebald deer. In either case, it's an awfully rare thing and, incidentally, perfectly legal to hunt in VA. #
- David Maurer provides the address of some of the best Christmas lights around town, and I mapped them. In a nutshell, it's all about Meade, Holmes, and Agnese. Update: The DP mapped them, too. #
- Google Maps now provides CTS routes, complete with fare prices and scheduling. This is so cool! #
- The Downtown Mall overhaul might come in under budget, thanks to the lousy economy. #
- DMB is playing the JPJ in April. #
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This is a community news blog about Charlottesville, VA, USA, started in March of 2001. It's run by Waldo Jaquith. It has nothing to do with C-Ville Weekly, the newspaper. Feel free to submit a story.
Waldo — Did you mean to say “isn’t going to pay” instead of “is”? Staff proposed $1,000,000 for signs over a 4-year period, Council approved $450,000. That’s still more than some would like, but it’s a 55% cut in what City staff and Downtown business leaders requested…
Would it be wrong to point out that it depends on what the definition of “is” is?
Ack! What a terrible mistake. (I fundamentally messed up the other blog entry that I posted last night, too.) That’s fixed now. I’m sorry about that.
Any money spend on signage to direct tourist to downtown or elsewhere is wasted taxpayer money when there are so many other pressing needs. The money should have been spend on developing more and better parking for downtown patrons. This council finds it extremely easy to be generous with other peoples money.
If they’re putting up new signs the first thing they need to do is pull down all the ones that reference the “Downtown Mall” as “historic”. With all of the demolition and re-construction that’s gone on it’s anything but.
The City staff and downtown merchant welfare recipients are not entitled to anything to be cut. I Believe this $450,000 is in addition to the $200,000 that was put aside last year, but it doesn’t matter. If it is wise to arbitrarily cut an appropriation that neither the staff nor the downtown merchant welfare recipients have asked for, then it is wiser to cut out the entire expenditure. “Daddy, I want $1000 to throw to the wind.” “No, child, you can only have $450.” This is a fine example of how the city spends money… a little here, a little there, everybody rides and we buy votes (with other peoples’ money). The staff said it neeeded $1M; by what criteria did council determine that only $450,000 (or $650,000) was needed ? Which locations and what kinds of signs are needed? Don’t bother to answer. Just remeber people, that Cville Eye told you last year when council paid $200,000 that the staff would be back. Prediction, after the signs start getting installed, they’ll be back asking. Did anybody see the Buckingham Palace price tags on those signs. This is becoming quite funny. If people are stupid enough to allow themselves to be treated in such a manner, they are getting exactly what they want or deserve. At least Ambassador Norris had the honesty to not call it a budget cut and that Council is “saving” tax payers money or this expenditure is being “fiscally responsible.” It is interesting that Council’s position has been that there is a crisis in housing, yet reduced the new housing welfare program by $700,000 in favor of putting up better signs for the welfare mongers to find their way to Council chambers to demand for welfare subsidies for their rents and mortgages.
Council isn’t paying for anything, including its lunch.