Monday, September 7, 2009

Cancel a project?

My anonymous "fan" once again has weighed in and it's so cool that someone feels strongly enough to comment.

The latest question is, when am I going to make the hard decisions and cancel a project rather than cut $1 million from lobbyists, public relations and non-litigating lawyers. The answer is, I'm not going to advocate cutting a project.

Why? Because those large projects are where we actually use outside contractors - contractors that provide jobs to workers in Ada County who do NOT work for government. We often use contractors on small projects as well, and those contractors also employ workers. With an unemployment rate of 9.4% and a jobless rate of over 16%, I think it's important to keep those projects on track.

The one exception to the big project construction is the Three Cities River Crossing. However, this now $80 million plus project will never get off the ground anyway and spending money on acquiring right-of-way doesn't really contribute to employment growth.

I still think the "fan" is wrong to say that since the million is spread so thin, that we should not worry about the taxation. Instead of slamming me, perhaps he/she would have done us all a better service by asking the County, the cities, the School Districts and the myriad other taxing entities on our tax bills to cut 3% from their property tax budgets.

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