Waverly West is continuing to become more and more of a mess every passing week. It's getting to the point where it's almost hilarious watching the foolish greed that trumped common sense in approving this thing, begin to unfold.
Witness a bewildered Bill Clement in the Free Press yesterday, wondering where the money for extending Kenaston as an expressway will come from, as the City cannot pay for it entirely. "While I think it's very innovative, [the expresway plan] it's not something the city can afford by itself..." Mr. Clement, these are the kinds of things you should have been asking about on, and leading up to, January 3rd and 4th, 2005, when you voted in favor of this whole thing. Were you asleep at the Council table on those days?
Witness Ladco Developers (the only party standing to profit from Waverly West) and the Province attempting to placate the critics of sprawl by planning a "commercial town centre" for the development, which would be bound by a split Kenaston. Meanwhile, the real desire for the expressway turns out to be "largely because it will serve as an intercontinental trade route connecting the airport to the border..." Yes, there is nothing like running across a high-speed trucking route to pick up a litre of milk or an ice cream cone, is there? Like the notion of affordable housing for affordable housing that disapeared long ago, new urbanist-style development seems to be nothing more than convenient lip service.
Witness Darth Steek, the skipping record of sprawl propaganda, desparately taking every chance he has to advocate the particle-board getting put up, and the money starts rolling in, before his developer fantasy-land gets stalled indefinately.
Witness Christopher Leo from the Department of Politics at the U of W, in his letter to the editor of the Free Press on the subject of raiding the city's reserve funds to fill potholes: "Our troubles began... when the city set out on a policy of building roads, sewers and water systems across the bald prairie, far in excess of our actual needs, and far beyond what we could afford to maintain." As it has for decades, his advice will go unheeded at a greedy and narrow City Hall.
This would all be even more funny to me if I didn't know that my children and I will be paying for it all.
Witness a bewildered Bill Clement in the Free Press yesterday, wondering where the money for extending Kenaston as an expressway will come from, as the City cannot pay for it entirely. "While I think it's very innovative, [the expresway plan] it's not something the city can afford by itself..." Mr. Clement, these are the kinds of things you should have been asking about on, and leading up to, January 3rd and 4th, 2005, when you voted in favor of this whole thing. Were you asleep at the Council table on those days?
Witness Ladco Developers (the only party standing to profit from Waverly West) and the Province attempting to placate the critics of sprawl by planning a "commercial town centre" for the development, which would be bound by a split Kenaston. Meanwhile, the real desire for the expressway turns out to be "largely because it will serve as an intercontinental trade route connecting the airport to the border..." Yes, there is nothing like running across a high-speed trucking route to pick up a litre of milk or an ice cream cone, is there? Like the notion of affordable housing for affordable housing that disapeared long ago, new urbanist-style development seems to be nothing more than convenient lip service.
Witness Darth Steek, the skipping record of sprawl propaganda, desparately taking every chance he has to advocate the particle-board getting put up, and the money starts rolling in, before his developer fantasy-land gets stalled indefinately.
Witness Christopher Leo from the Department of Politics at the U of W, in his letter to the editor of the Free Press on the subject of raiding the city's reserve funds to fill potholes: "Our troubles began... when the city set out on a policy of building roads, sewers and water systems across the bald prairie, far in excess of our actual needs, and far beyond what we could afford to maintain." As it has for decades, his advice will go unheeded at a greedy and narrow City Hall.
This would all be even more funny to me if I didn't know that my children and I will be paying for it all.
posted by The Rise and Sprawl at
6:31 PM
2 Comments:
interesting...
as for pothole, winnipeg has the same amount of pot hole formation as any other cold canadian city. in economics class we were just talking about how the city has found a new, and cheaper, way of filling pot holes - but only cheaper on a yearly basis. if the city actually took the time to fix the road properly, instead of shooting some quick fix into them, we can reduce the cost of returning to the old potholes, year after year - do it right the first time.
but i guess this is just [one] example of how things get done in a city.
james
You're right... There are a couple of potholes I can think of, one at Portage and Main and another on near the underpass, they were both "repaired" with the money-saving method (only works out to about $5 per pothole) last year, and are back again this year.
How much money are they really saving by spending $5 per hole year after year, when the problem is only getting bigger and bigger?
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home