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Cities Mayor’s Bailout Requests has Pork

January 17, 2009

Part of the bailout package is suppose to be used to produce jobs by being applied to repair and/or build much needed roads, bridges and schools infrastructure in the United States; should not be spent on non-essential “pork items”. There is a lot of non-essential pork in the requests made by cities Mayors that should not be funded and should be scrubbed from their requests. My research has revealed a number of items that are questionable; many of which should be considered as non-essential pork and not be funded in a “bailout package”. The following items only represent a small sample of the numerous requests made for 641 cities.

Alabama:

Bessemer Projects: renovate Frank House Golf Course, Dolonah Quarry Municipal Park, Festival Fields and Park Community Center and other park improvements totaling $18.6-million.

Huntsville Projects: Lowe Mill and Terry Heights neighborhood parks $1-million, Eastside Recreation Facility $3-million, Southside Recreation Facility $4-million, Northside Recreation Facility $4-million.

Mobile Projects: Public safety for police budgeting to increase personnel $15.5-million, establish Mobile Housing Board $18-million, public safety-fire-rescue $86.75-million.

Anchorage, Alaska: $30.7-million on the following projects Harry J. McDonald Center, Kid’s Corps Building, Mid-Town Park, Mountain View Arts & Culture Center, Loussac Library and bus replacement and may be others.

Miami, Florida $3.4 billion: Orange Bowl parking garage $94-million, Virginia Key Beach Museum, $25-million, Legion Park Building $20-million, , Gibson Park $20.8-million, Museum Park construction $70-million, Community Center $9.5-million, soccer field $1.38-million, new park aqua center $10-million, Fern Island park site improvements $10-million, new Virrick Park aqua center $10-million, Arts-Culture Center/Library $12-million, new building projects in four parks $225,770/$500,000/ $776,700/$900,000 and more than $46-million in other park projects and list goes on.

Goodyear, Arizona: El Rio Riparin Park & Trail System $20-million, personnel staffing of software, School Resource Officers and Police/Fire Administration $14.6million. If allotted, how would the city provide the future required reoccurring costs?

Brockton, Mass: 30 Police Cruisers $1.05-million, 10 Police Motorcycles $300,000.

Annapolis, Maryland: New recreation center $13-million.

Texas:

Arlington: Expand tennis center $4-million.

Euless: Midway Park Family Life Center $15-million.

La Port: Life Style Center $7.6-million.

Henderson, Nev: $20 million to help develop a 60-acre sports field complex.

Hercules, Calif. : Waterfront Duck Pond Park $2.5-million.

Natchez, Miss: Sports Complex $9.5-million.

The items listed are only the tip of the iceberg; that is why these requests should be carefully investigated and scrutinized to identify non-essential pork that should be eliminated from the U.S. Conference of Mayor’s request for funds. Scrutiny, Oversight and accountable of any bailout funds provided are the responsibility of the Executive and Legislative branches of government; something that was lacking in the initial $350 billion package. These are not private funds; they are American tax-payers money. I believe the majority of Americans would be willing to make sacrifices to overcome our economic problems, and suffering of millions of citizens, if our President elect and Lawmakers exercised prudence, sensibility and wisdom in actions taken to resolve the problems.

Source: U.S. Conference of Mayor’s ready-to-go infrastructure plan to spur national economy.

Darrell W. Weston, 3491 W. Daffodil Dr., Beverly Hills, Florida 34465, (352) 527-4449

Darrell W. Weston of FL 11:55AM January 25, 2009