“Councilman Kozachik put it out there in his newsletter that he is being kept in the dark,” said Cecelia Cruz, El Rio Coalition leader to the Tucson City Council last night. “How do you think this community feels?”
While Tucson golfers addressed the City Council last night about golf, they said what everyone else is feeling about everything the City is doing: complete frustration with the City’s incompetence.
The truth is that they should shut the hell up. They either voted for Kozachik, Fimbres, and Ulich, or they didn’t vote in the last election. Only a handful voted for Ben Buehler Garcia and Mike Polak; therefore, those few can complain. The rest need to explain to the rest of us why it is perfectly okay for Andrew Quigley, the City staffer in charge of the streetcar project, to say about being $13 million short, “I think it’s really good news … because it’s about half of what we anticipated.”
Who is willing to hold these people responsible?
Dean Cotlow wrote on his company’s blog on Monday, in response to an op-ed from Larry Hecker in Monday’s Arizona Daily Star entitled “Creating a balanced economic development strategy.” Cotlow writes, “Mr. Hecker, I am all for having a more positive attitude about our economic situation in Tucson; however, the truth hurts and the City of Tucson has a national reputation where it is as close to impossible to do business, create jobs, develop and maintain basic infrastructure, develop real property and with continued increasing real property taxes on businesses along with police resources being choked it is amazing any of us survive.”
The truth is that people are not surviving. Most of them are looking for higher ground. That higher ground is to the north of us. Jobs are being created by private businesses who can get the permits they need when they need them. They don’t have to worry if they have hired the right consultants who can pull the right strings.
That is the truth.
Kozachik can deny responsibility for the funding problems just like he denied that he peed on a wall. No one really believes him. His credibility is nearly shot.
But on the outside chance that he didn’t know, well, then shame on him; if he did and he is denying it, he really doesn’t care where he pees – or on whom he pees.
Sam Lieberman