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Hey Mark: A message from my city councilman
Topic Started: Feb 1 2010, 12:58 PM (626 Views)
ivorythumper
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
MESSAGE FROM COUNCILMAN DICICCIO

***If you would prefer to view the text below on the District 6 website please click here: http://phoenix.gov/district6/budgetinfo.html


Phoenix is facing a $245 million budget deficit at the same time it costs about $100,000 per employee, and the city has more than 14,000 employees. It’s not sustainable – nor fair – to ask taxpayers to pay more taxes to prop up a billion dollar labor bubble.

Councilman Sal DiCiccio’s solution is to focus on core responsibilities of city government, restructure how the city operates and look to the private sector to do some of this work.

See below and attached for a more detailed analysis and solutions. Please forward this to your email list.

Solutions for Phoenix’s billion dollar labor bubble

Phoenix, like every level of government in this economy, is facing huge budget shortfall – about $245 million over two years -- which requires either a lot more money or a much different way of doing business.

The former isn’t happening. We must concentrate on the latter – not only because it’s our only reasonable choice, but because the city needs major structural shifts regardless of today’s economy.

The biggest revelation since I’ve returned to the council is that the average cost for all city employees is $100,000, including all benefits. That includes all employees – clerks to managers. (The average private sector total compensation in the Phoenix-Mesa area, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, is $54,100 – about half the Phoenix average.) For an enterprise the size of Phoenix, with about 14,000 workers, that’s simply unsustainable, which is why we need to look to the private sector to perform some functions less expensively.


Phoenix is facing a billion dollar a year labor bubble.

One step I rule out is raising taxes. A food tax – an idea recently floated -- is regressive and hurts the poor and those on fixed incomes the most. Most importantly, it shifts responsibility for solving this money problem from government to you, the public. Phoenix families are hurting enough and have done their share. This problem is our, government’s, responsibility to fix.

I recommend three solutions:

· Focus on core responsibilities. Out-source non-core functions.
· Examine departments for greater efficiency and innovation.
· Make Phoenix the best place in the country to do business.

Focus on core responsibilities:

The city’s primary job is to protect citizens and to provide basic services. We must protect functions that protect us. We want cops on the streets, firefighters in the trucks – maybe even more than now. We want water to the homes, and streets and sewers maintained.

I want the city to look at all areas of government that can be done as well or better, and less expensively, in the private sector. With $100,000 average employee costs, Phoenix must look elsewhere to get things done.

Areas could include vehicle repair, printing– even some planning and building approval roles. Advantages of managed competition include competitive bidding, self-preservation innovation, greater pressure for good customer service and less pressure to expand the government work force to meet temporary demand. I would apply the “Yellow Pages” test -- if you can look it up in the phone book, perhaps we should consider if someone other than government might be the best provider.

Greater efficiency and innovation:

We recommended and the Council approved departmental efficiency studies, and the city manager appointed an innovation task force to look for savings and better ways to do things. Business people must be on that group as well, and it must be open and transparent.

Outside systems analysis can identify procedural roadblocks and dead ends, eliminate steps and improve the outcome for the customer.

Make Phoenix the best place to do business:

Nothing will fix city budget problems better than good jobs created by a vibrant business community. Private sector jobs create real wealth, not government jobs, so Phoenix must do all it can to attract, maintain and grow good, sustainable jobs. At the very least, we must eliminate bureaucratic roadblocks.

Phoenix recently restructured its business services division, the department that approves business expansions, to make it more efficient and friendly. Within the parameters of protecting safety, the environment and neighborhoods, we must develop a system and reputation that makes companies and entrepreneurs clamor to set up and grow in Phoenix. But we must do more to cut red tape and get people working again.

We can handle this recession one of two ways. We can do everything we’ve done before, only less of it and not as well. Or we do what’s most important better, out-source more to local professionals, and create a city that drives business and jobs. That will give us the system and resources to make sure our neighborhoods and homes are protected and services are delivered efficiently and prudently.

Government created the problem. You, the taxpayer, should not be responsible for the burden. I believe solutions are in finding efficiencies, out-sourcing non-core functions if they can be done better elsewhere and growing private sector jobs by making Phoenix the best place to do business in the country.

Phoenix Councilman Sal DiCiccio represents District 6, which includes North Central, Arcadia, Biltmore and Ahwatukee. He can be reached at 602-262-7491 or council.district.6@phoenix.gov.

City programs, staff on chopping block:
http://www.ahwatukee.com/news/million-8652-year-city.html

City of Phoenix details plan for drastic cutbacks:
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2010/01/28/20100128phoenix-cutting-500-police-fire-positions-to-balance-budget28-ON.html.

You are receiving this e-mail because you have contacted the District 6 office about an issue. To be removed from this list please e-mail council.district.6@phoenix.gov
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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Mikhailoh
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Great idea. Whole new private industries serving the public good. Innovation, not unionization.
Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead - Lucille Ball
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Mark
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Excellent!
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Big John
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Some people are so gullible.






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Mark
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HOLY CARP!!!
About what?
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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
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Kincaid
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HOLY CARP!!!
I found this idea particularly enlightening:

That when budgets tighten and the gov't decides to tax its way to a balanced budget...

Quote:
 
...it shifts responsibility for solving this money problem from government to you, the public.


Gov'ts never seem to reimagine themselves. They just continue doing the same thing while voraciously consuming the wealth of those they are supposed to serve, all the while growing and growing like a cancer.
Kincaid - disgusted Republican Partisan since 2006.
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Big John
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DiCiccio sez:

Quote:
 
Focus on core responsibilities. Out-source non-core functions.
· Examine departments for greater efficiency and innovation.
· Make Phoenix the best place in the country to do business.



A little fact-checking in the Arizona Republic article revealed that DiCiccio's calculations may be misleading. According to the Republic:
Quote:
 

The 527 city of Phoenix employees who earn more than $100,000 in annual wages account for 7.4 percent of the total salaries paid to full-time workers.

But an Arizona Republic analysis shows that those six-figure earners represent only 3.7 percent of the city's 14,343-employee workforce.

About 1,375 employees earn more than $88,005, or the base salary of Mayor Phil Gordon. And only one of the top 10 Phoenix earners was a woman.


they have their work cut out for them. What to close? Libraries? public pools? parks? public venues? streets? not upgrade sewers/water lines?

That's why DiCiccio is using strong-sounding-but-anchored-in-the-future political-speak like "focus", "examine" and THEN "make." I call that headline grabbing. I have a word: how about "DO" and shut up about it and just get it done? Because it's all to get him re-elected.

After focusing, examining and making, he can re-juggle his numbers and come up with the 3.7% like the AZ Republic did, take the credit for the 3.7% instant savings off his orignal numbers, and get re-elected.

That's politics for ya!






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ivorythumper
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Did you calculate the cost of benefits into those 3.7% of "six figure earners" before determining that DiCiccio's calculations are misleading?

And did you have a clue that DiCiccio was just elected to a FOUR year term before you decided that it was all about getting reelected?
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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Big John
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Quote:
 
Did you calculate the cost of benefits into those 3.7% of "six figure earners" before determining that DiCiccio's calculations are misleading?


No the Arizona Republic did.

Quote:
 
And did you have a clue that DiCiccio was just elected to a FOUR year term before you decided that it was all about getting reelected?


Great. He's already making headlines for himself. We'll see what actually happens. It's just funny to read about government people trying to create less government -- especially in such an awful economy where so much of the area's liveliehood depends on government money. Politicans love to talk and bluster and use action words like "examine" and "focus", but rarely do you see the results at the other end.

I'll check in on him in a few months and see which side of the $100,000 earners the red-state axe comes down on.





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ivorythumper
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Big John
Feb 1 2010, 09:10 PM
Quote:
 
Did you calculate the cost of benefits into those 3.7% of "six figure earners" before determining that DiCiccio's calculations are misleading?


No the Arizona Republic did.
You're the one who reported it here as if it were accurate.
Quote:
 


Quote:
 
And did you have a clue that DiCiccio was just elected to a FOUR year term before you decided that it was all about getting reelected?


Great. He's already making headlines for himself.
"already making headlines? He's previously served two terms in Council and is well known here. What do you mean by your comment?
Quote:
 

We'll see what actually happens. It's just funny to read about government people trying to create less government -- especially in such an awful economy where so much of the area's liveliehood depends on government money. Politicans love to talk and bluster and use action words like "examine" and "focus", but rarely do you see the results at the other end.

I'll check in on him in a few months and see which side of the $100,000 earners the red-state axe comes down on.
He's one vote. But I don't see any grounds for your statement that anyone is being gullible. Do you have any, or did you just decide that without any facts?
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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Big John
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Here's an illuminating article on him. . .

Seems he's got his hands in all kinds of government business. And some multi-million dollar potential conflicts of interest as well. . .

I'm not dogging the guy, I'm just alerting you that populist politicians rarely practice what they preach.

But oh when they say "cuts" everyone gets a boner. He can cut and cut and cut and cut, but he'll probably still get the freeway contract for his company and get it rerouted over the land he bought to sell to the AZ DOT. He's got nothing to lose and everything ($1.9 billion) to gain.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2010/01/31/20100131diciccio0131.html

Edited by Big John, Feb 1 2010, 09:36 PM.





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musicasacra
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HOLY CARP!!!
I believe your position towards politicians is knee-jerk negative, and I understand where some of that comes from. But I think it's strange to throw out "gullible" when you don't know about the complexities of the current city budget issues other than what a quick google showed you. We are capable of thinking, asking questions, verifying, etc.
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ivorythumper
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What precisely is "illuminating"? Did you read the parts about the facts that he was not in office at the time of the consultant role, and that the decision about the location of the freeway is made at the State level and Federal level and Tribal level? Or that he has recused himself from votes in the past where he himself has identified conflicts of interest?

Is he not entitled as a private citizen before resuming office to make beneficial business arrangements? Where exactly is the conflict of interest given that he can only advocate but not vote on the matter?

Do you even understand the geography of the proposed freeway land? That Phoenix is now against the border of the Gila Reservation, and the earlier planned freeway path along Pecos would ruin very good neighborhoods, and that his constituents are reasonably against that? That there is already a local precedent that has been mutually beneficial to another local tribal nation (the Pima) to align the loop 101 inside their land rather than create a freeway border with Scottsdale?

I have no idea what you mean by "populist politicians". Are you suggesting that anytime a politician responds to the concerns of his constituency that he is pandering and/or hypocritical and/or lying?
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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Big John
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If there's one thing I hate it's writing a long, cogent reply and then accidentally deleting it.

No musicasacra and IT I don't think either of you aren't capable of thinking clearly. IT especially constantly makes himself available to remind me of his superior intellect and experience and my worthless, shameful ignorance that will never improve from my attendance at a "community college" (his words).

All I ask is that you take these letters with a grain of salt. Here you have a man who was elected yes, but was APPOINTED in 2009 to fill a vacant seat by the council. So he ran more or less as an incumbent with all kinds of rumors swirling about conflicts of interest.

Example: http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2009-10-22/news/councilman-sal-diciccio-could-make-a-mint-if-a-freeway-extension-goes-through-but-his-neighborhood-hates-the-idea/

One of the most interesting classes I've taken so far at school was a political science course. For my thesis, I wrote about the privatization of the Chicago Housing Authority into a public/private partnership with a private firm called "The Habitat Company" which was charged with overseeing the relocation of thousands of low-income residents from the high-rise slums. Residents were relocated to scattered site new housing, voucher-approved housing mixed into "regular" neighborhoods and construction of new developments with Federal block grants that mixed full-price, affordable, and Section 8 housing all within the same buzzing-entrances. It's been a disaster but the woman who presides over the company that managed it all is now one of Obama's closest confidantes.

Heading up the Habitat Company was Valerie Jarrett. You'll like these links:

http://michellemalkin.com/2009/09/18/olympic-sized-boondoggle-what-valerie-jarrett-and-michelle-obama-are-up-to/

http://stopjarrett.com/2009/12/valerie-jarrett%E2%80%99s-cronies-see-%E2%80%9Cgreen%E2%80%9D/

I liked my research so much I ended up BUYING some of the books. The research portion was an amazing eye-opener into how privatization (which sounds so Republican on the face of it) is actually just politics as usual -- no bid contracts, favoritism, and, at worst -- privatizing city business over to companies owned by city managers -- who then get rich beyond belief.

If you really want some interesting insights into Federal or local governmental devolution, which was originally conceived by Nixon, read the Paul Eisinger essay entitled "City Politics in an Era of Federal Devolution" (Chapter 25 of Paul Kantor's and Dennis Judd's book "American Urban Politics in a GLobal Age").

Also, "City Politics, the Political Economy of Urban America" by Dennis Judd and Todd Swanstrom, is a real eye opener. Chapter 8 "The Rise of the Sunbelt" chronicles the growth of your area and predicts the convergence of its founders conservative bent with political/economic realities. Another chapter on how freeways changed racial balance by literally walling off areas relates to the woes Phoenix is experiencing with where to locate its freeways. Of particular interest are the stories of Boston's freeway system and the odd mashup that is I-90/94 in Chicago (the Dan Ryan Expressway) and just WHY it makes a mysterious jog to the west around Chinatown (hint -- someone owned some land). Same with Houston's 610 Loop freeway. Why DOES it make a mysterious jog out into nowhere on the northeast end before coming back and forming a more logical oval?

Finally, if you really want an eye-opening piece about Obama and his neighborhood (Bronzeville -- home of the most aggressive public/private housing alternatives), read "Black on the Block -- The Politics of Race and Class in the City" by Mary Patillo -- a sociology professor at Northwestern University. It's an amazing story (from the inside -- by a resident) of what happens when privatization takes over a neighborhood of predominately poor people.

What I took away from my research is that cronyism is often packaged and marketed as progress to make the voters support it. And they are pros at it.

You have a very wealthy businessman who is advocating smaller government for Phoenix, yet he gets the lion's share of his substantial 7- to 9-figure income (depending on who you read) from government. That should tell you a lot right there. He has made his fortune off of the government.

Just because someone says they advocate one thing doesn't mean that they aren't laying the groundwork so that when something in their area of expertise gets privatized, that all the money for it flows into their personal bank account.

THAT'S why I am so cynical with oversimple-sounding emails from councilpeople. Few politicians really want to make a difference for their city or the rank and file. They want to make a difference yes, but oftentimes those differences benefit them the most financially, and it's important to just be AWARE of the POTENTIAL for it.





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musicasacra
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HOLY CARP!!!
Big John
Feb 2 2010, 10:05 AM
THAT'S why I am so cynical with oversimple-sounding emails from councilpeople. Few politicians really want to make a difference for their city or the rank and file. They want to make a difference yes, but oftentimes those differences benefit them the most financially, and it's important to just be AWARE of the POTENTIAL for it.
I'm quite aware. My undergrad degree is in political science, and I used to work in politics and local government. I know many of the games that are played. I always ask questions, but I don't automatically assume the worst of people either.
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Mikhailoh
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John, the Dan Ryan jogs to the west there to avoid the huge railyard on the west bank of the Des Plaines River that it would have bisected had it continued north, and the river area itself.

Sometimes a cigar is just a smoke.
Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead - Lucille Ball
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Big John
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[edit] double post
Edited by Big John, Feb 2 2010, 12:27 PM.





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Big John
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Mikhailoh
Feb 2 2010, 11:29 AM
John, the Dan Ryan jogs to the west there to avoid the huge railyard on the west bank of the Des Plaines River that it would have bisected had it continued north, and the river area itself.

Sometimes a cigar is just a smoke.
Des Plaines River? Huh? What are you talking about? The Des Plaines River doesn't even touch the Chicago city limits!

The only thing worse than politicans are map programs.

Are you aware that from 26th street all the way to 8th street the whole curve from north to northwest and then back to north again is one continuous high-level bridge anyway? It crosses all kinds of things and soars right over the CHICAGO River. The [edit: original] Santa Fe railyard is underneath the Dan Ryan expressway. The whole thing walls off the "Bridgeport" area of Chicago from the high-rise projects on the other side of the freeway. Bridgeport was Mayor Daley's home area.

I think you are looking at 294 (the Tri-State Tollway) and it's jog over the Des Plaines River in LAGRANGE PARK/JUSTICE and the gigantic replacement yard built by Santa Fe.

One of the nice things about picking up a piggyback trailer at the Santa Fe yard in winter was that they'd try to park the trailers under the freeway bridges so they wouldn't be all covered in snow and make you over-weight. :D
Edited by Big John, Feb 2 2010, 11:59 AM.





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Big John
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Mayor Daley (the original) lived in Bridgeport, which is flanked on one side by the Dan Ryan. It was built as a racial barrier and it's been documented in countless urban journals.

from page 618 of the "Journal of Urban History"
Quote:
 
As Daley developed the Loop, the authors assert that simultaneously he created
the “State Street corridor,” the largest concentration of black public housing
in America. Before Daley was elected mayor in 1955, the former liberal
Chicago housing director Elizabeth Wood tried to conservatively integrate
housing, by using the “Neighborhood Composition Rule” (p. 71). The policy
stated that Chicago public housing must be eighty percent white and twenty
percent black. As the number of black public housing applicants increased and
started to move into white neighborhoods, whites openly resisted. When
Daley took over, open housing was a closed issue. Daley’s development policies
intentionally prevented the expanding Black Belt from spilling over into
white ethnic neighborhoods. Cohen and Taylor note that the fourteen-lane Dan
Ryan Expressway is a vivid reminder of race and place in Chicago. The
expressway created a barrier that divided black and white neighborhoods.
Chapters 9 through 11 are devoted to Daley’s response to the Chicago Freedom
Movement. Daleywas anti–open housing, and his position stiffened after
the 1963 mayoral election.


The freeway opened in 1960-61 BTW.

Link: http://www.conncoll.edu/academics/web_profiles/faculty_docs/May04JournalofUrbanHistory.pdf
Edited by Big John, Feb 2 2010, 12:00 PM.





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Big John
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I'll find the detailed article about it in one of my texts. It's really an amazing story of using concrete to wall off suburbs and incomes. Baltimore has a similar story of twisting freeway walls.





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Big John
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Posted Image

In the meantime, here is an aerial pic of the Robert Taylor homes and the whole public housing corridor stretching north to downtown. The Dan Ryan is off to the left. Where the freeway curves left (barely visible in the distance) is where Daley lived (to the left and south of it). The freeway walled white neighborhoods off from Chinatown to the northeast on the curve, and the Taylor homes, blacks, Stateway Gardens, and the Ida B. Wells complex -- all infamous projects from the fifties on the east. The Dan Ryan made the lakefront south of downtown a no-man's land.

It's fascinating history really. Never underestimate the demographic influences of a freeway.
Edited by Big John, Feb 2 2010, 12:17 PM.





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ivorythumper
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Big John
Feb 2 2010, 10:05 AM
If there's one thing I hate it's writing a long, cogent reply and then accidentally deleting it.

No musicasacra and IT I don't think either of you aren't capable of thinking clearly. IT especially constantly makes himself available to remind me of his superior intellect and experience and my worthless, shameful ignorance that will never improve from my attendance at a "community college" (his words).

It isn't a community college? My apologies. Are you still upset that I pointed out your errors about de Toqueville's view of Catholicism? I wasn't dissing community colleges, I simply said that your research would fail even at the community college level (with the understanding that higher levels of education require more rigorous standards of research). I hope you are developing well in your academic pursuits, and I applaud your efforts.
Quote:
 

All I ask is that you take these letters with a grain of salt. Here you have a man who was elected yes, but was APPOINTED in 2009 to fill a vacant seat by the council. So he ran more or less as an incumbent with all kinds of rumors swirling about conflicts of interest.

Example: http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2009-10-22/news/councilman-sal-diciccio-could-make-a-mint-if-a-freeway-extension-goes-through-but-his-neighborhood-hates-the-idea/

I don't think you really want to be quoting New Times Weekly as a credible and unbiased journalistic source. Trust me on this one.
Quote:
 

One of the most interesting classes I've taken so far at school was a political science course. For my thesis, I wrote about the privatization of the Chicago Housing Authority into a public/private partnership with a private firm called "The Habitat Company" which was charged with overseeing the relocation of thousands of low-income residents from the high-rise slums. Residents were relocated to scattered site new housing, voucher-approved housing mixed into "regular" neighborhoods and construction of new developments with Federal block grants that mixed full-price, affordable, and Section 8 housing all within the same buzzing-entrances. It's been a disaster but the woman who presides over the company that managed it all is now one of Obama's closest confidantes.

Heading up the Habitat Company was Valerie Jarrett. You'll like these links:

http://michellemalkin.com/2009/09/18/olympic-sized-boondoggle-what-valerie-jarrett-and-michelle-obama-are-up-to/

http://stopjarrett.com/2009/12/valerie-jarrett%E2%80%99s-cronies-see-%E2%80%9Cgreen%E2%80%9D/

I liked my research so much I ended up BUYING some of the books. The research portion was an amazing eye-opener into how privatization (which sounds so Republican on the face of it) is actually just politics as usual -- no bid contracts, favoritism, and, at worst -- privatizing city business over to companies owned by city managers -- who then get rich beyond belief.

If you really want some interesting insights into Federal or local governmental devolution, which was originally conceived by Nixon, read the Paul Eisinger essay entitled "City Politics in an Era of Federal Devolution" (Chapter 25 of Paul Kantor's and Dennis Judd's book "American Urban Politics in a GLobal Age").

Also, "City Politics, the Political Economy of Urban America" by Dennis Judd and Todd Swanstrom, is a real eye opener. Chapter 8 "The Rise of the Sunbelt" chronicles the growth of your area and predicts the convergence of its founders conservative bent with political/economic realities. Another chapter on how freeways changed racial balance by literally walling off areas relates to the woes Phoenix is experiencing with where to locate its freeways. Of particular interest are the stories of Boston's freeway system and the odd mashup that is I-90/94 in Chicago (the Dan Ryan Expressway) and just WHY it makes a mysterious jog to the west around Chinatown (hint -- someone owned some land). Same with Houston's 610 Loop freeway. Why DOES it make a mysterious jog out into nowhere on the northeast end before coming back and forming a more logical oval?

Finally, if you really want an eye-opening piece about Obama and his neighborhood (Bronzeville -- home of the most aggressive public/private housing alternatives), read "Black on the Block -- The Politics of Race and Class in the City" by Mary Patillo -- a sociology professor at Northwestern University. It's an amazing story (from the inside -- by a resident) of what happens when privatization takes over a neighborhood of predominately poor people.

What I took away from my research is that cronyism is often packaged and marketed as progress to make the voters support it. And they are pros at it.

You have a very wealthy businessman who is advocating smaller government for Phoenix, yet he gets the lion's share of his substantial 7- to 9-figure income (depending on who you read) from government. That should tell you a lot right there. He has made his fortune off of the government.

Just because someone says they advocate one thing doesn't mean that they aren't laying the groundwork so that when something in their area of expertise gets privatized, that all the money for it flows into their personal bank account.

THAT'S why I am so cynical with oversimple-sounding emails from councilpeople. Few politicians really want to make a difference for their city or the rank and file. They want to make a difference yes, but oftentimes those differences benefit them the most financially, and it's important to just be AWARE of the POTENTIAL for it.
I am in full agreement on the meddling for profit that governments do, especially in urban areas. In the fifties and sixties "block busting" was a common practice to dislodge whites from urban neighborhood by inserting black families and dropping property values -- thus encouraging white flight to the suburbs. Freeways played another part in this.

What I am missing is how that applies to the location of the loop 202 on the south side of South Mountain. Phoenix there borders the Gila Indian Nation, so either the freeway is right on the border, or it is somewhat inside the reservation -- but regardless it makes sense to align it with the 202 to the east, which connects the whole south east valley, and loops up to the north to Scottsdale.

Either that, or abandon the whole project, but there is already a massive congestion problem with I-10 running through Phoenix. In your experience as a trucker, wouldn't you rather have a by pass between Tucson and Los Angeles on the I-10 and avoid Phoenix if you didn't need to pass through?
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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Mikhailoh
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Yes. it is the Chicago River, the Des Plaines comes in further west. But still, there is no room in that railyard to run a freeway bridge over it. The tracks are much too close together.
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Big John
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IT: I don't think that race is necessarily the driving factor with the 202 like it was with the Dan Ryan. But PLACEMENT of freeways is a political process and with the internet it's easier to make the beneficiaries of different routes more visible.

There already IS a bypass between Tucson and Los Angeles. It's called Interstate 8. You take it west to Gila Bend and then north to Buckeye. Taht gets you around ALL of the Phoenix congestion -- just set the cruise at 78mph and you're home free.

But I DO understand the congestion issue. It's just ironic that DiCiccio controls (or did control) 150 or so acres in the path of the freeway, which could empower him financially. And there is a lack of roads over there. But there is also a lack of development which of course will change drastically if the freeway goes in.

A freeway construction project usually involves FEDERAL funds and provides local jobs. Add to that the wealth it usually brings to an area and it all seems like a good idea to me. But it's hard to make it gel with his "less-government" platform is all.

the "build more freeways" mentality is great, but it's too bad more people won't take equal advantage of public transporation, which has become a bad word over the past generation or two. Build too many and you get L.A. and smog. Since prevailing winds come out of the south and west in summer -- imagine what a lot of growth west of town will do to air quality going east -- especially where it's blocked by the mountains (From Cave Creek to Scottsdale down to Apache Jct.).

I'll bet you a buck that long-haul truckers will still do the I-8 bypass anyway. All of the major truckstops are at the I-8 I-10 junction with the exception of that Flying J(oke) or Pilot or whatever it is off of I-10 west of downtown.

just be wary when a politician says he is for one thing and then reaching around and picking your wallet with the other hand.






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Steve Miller
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Phoenix recently restructured its business services division, the department that approves business expansions, to make it more efficient and friendly.

The City of Phoenix has a department that approves business expansions?
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