As Mrs. Baird reported at her blog:
Jason Hublar of the Falling Run Group questioned where the money would be spent if the fees were raised. He said the $100,000 appropriated was spent in another neighborhood. A representative from the Stormwater board said the funds are used on a case by case basis.
Do we yet know which neighborhood was being referenced here as the recipient of money that Mr. Hublar thought was coming his neighborhood's way?
I'm just curious, given that the Coffey strategy throughout the current stormwater debate has been to divide the city's neighborhoods, pitting them against each other to bob for farthings, when their real collective ire should be directed against Coffey and his do-nothing, dilettante council compatriots.
During a stormwater board meeting, Gary Brinkworth said that he would like to see that 100k used for the engineering costs associated with fixing Castlewood Drive. I reported that, but the board has not officially voted for that use, though it has moved Castlewood up to the top of its priority list.
ReplyDeleteThe Castlewood folks have been showing up to meetings for months about this stuff and as anyone who has ever attended any type of political meeting knows, the spoils go to the most proactive.
When I was stormwater board chairman, we utilized a weighted scale (approx. 14 variables) that prioritized capital improvement projects which in effect removed the politics from decision making, quite frankly I do not believe any projects should procede until a legitimate stormwater masterplan has been finalized. I know that the castlewood area is in dire straights, largely due to uncontrolled development and inadequate infrastructure, but to spend the first new revenue stream at castlewood just because they consistently show up at stormwater board meetings is not the way to approach the system wide problem, get a masterplan in place and then strategically address the bottlenecks to get leverage on the system, otherwise we are right back to a political way of operating vs a scientific and engineering based way of operating.
ReplyDelete