It seems the mayor’s office and finance department didn’t get the memo from the planning office. According to the planning office in today’s Gargoyle Leader story total construction value the first quarter of 2009 was at $35 million down $38 million from last year in the same period and single home permits were at 54 in the first quarter of 2009 down 38 from last year.
So if construction growth is down almost 50% compared to last year why does the city think we need to continue expanding and building more parks, doubling our professional services budget and hiring more employees?
Good question.
Generally, when talking about city growth, one is talking about population. The population can still grow quite a bit without any new housing starts. We’ve been overbuilt for a while.
I agree with the population thing. But one of the major things when city hall talks about growth they always say we must build NEW parks and NEW roads because of NEW development. I agree with the overbuilding, and now I think it is time the city and contractors concentrated on our current infrastructure, and I’m not talking about little pet projects like DT and Pettigrew heights. There are several hoods in this city that are in a lot worse shape then Pettigrew heights. We need to get away from this mentality that the city only wants to spend money on NEW things.
You mean the sinkholes that keep popping up in th eolder east-side neighborhoods and the poor drainage on streets like mine (which is only 40 years old)?
Pretty Much. It seems they only care about ‘appearance’ and as long as visitors are not driving thru those neighborhoods we’ll just ignore them.