Two more board members are leaving the monorail. The P-I is reporting that both acting-chairwoman Kristina Hill and finance committee chairwoman Sue Secker will be stepping down when their terms expire at year's end.
Hill and Secker have plausible excuses for wanting to leave the board -- both want to devote more time to their day jobs. Of course, if the monorail was going from success to success instead of from failure to failure, being a monorail board member would be easier and the conflict with regular employment would be smaller.
But the telling part of the article is this:
[Former chairman Tom] Weeks' position has not been filled, and Hill said she has searched for a successor to his and her own position, so far without success.Joining the monorail board now is like boarding the Titanic after it struck the iceberg: valiant if an attempt to save the passengers, but foolhardy if an attempt to save the ship. Posted by Andy MacDonald at September 02, 2005 05:33 PM | Email This
Won't that thing just die before they decide to spend more of our money studying it?
Are they going to hire a $$$$blue ribbon committee to study why it was an expensive bad idea?
How much more are they going to soak the tax payers for before they just kill it? Sink that ship!
(now off topic:)
You know? I look at New Orleans (and Louisiana as a whole) and see Seattle! Run by liberals - spending money on foolish projects instead of planning for disaster! Keeping as many people as possible on the welfare rolls so they (the Democrats) will have useful eaters (voters) in future elections. But when disaster strikes - all these fools are going to do is complain about their viaduct not being funded by the gas tax or their monorail not being built! Never mind that most people will die in other neglected areas of the city!....Like the Central district - where they will be robbed, raped and murdered...or how about Rainier Valley? That's a lovely place to be evacuated to! Freemont? Yikes!
The truth is - Seattle is just as vulnerable to disaster as New Orleans! One major earthquake could liquify downtown streets. The viaduct would be the least of our worries if that
happens!
If you want to see the difference - think about the first days after 9/11. Pataki and Guiliani had basic emergency plans in place in their city and state! They devoted resources to those plans and were able to assemble help on a local level -because they knew fema wuld not get up and running for a few days! They were on it!
Now - think about what Louisiana's Governor has been doing for the past week! She has been wringing her hands, appearing at news conferences...saying things are bad but they must have hope! She should have had a plan! She should have utilized other parts of her state for evacuation and rescue operations! Many parts of Louisiana were not affected by the storm! She just sat there waiting for the feds - who always take days to mobilize! And I'm sorry - but the Mayor of New Orleans REALLY should have had a plan! He knew his city was below sea level! Always has been! Trouble was going to come one day - yet he had no plan! His city was making billions from the gambling boats and tourists but he couldn't spend any of it on levy maintenance or disaster planning? Sounds like the standard liberal Democrat budget to me!
And they have the audacity to blame Bush for their tragedy? Hah! Thank God the Whitehouse had a plan - or these people would be dead on their rooftops 3 weeks from now - still waiting for their local Government to do something!