We were interested to read that one of the stimulus projects that the city of Grand Junction wants to pry out of the Obama administration is the rejected $98 million public safety/administration aggrandizement project.
The assumption seeming to be that if your local taxpayers know too much about it, perhaps bureaucrats in Washington won't look too closely and you can get tax money from other people. It just seems a little difficult to swallow that you're willing to palm off projects rejected by your own taxpayers to an even larger and hopefully less informed group of taxpayers.
This thinking harkens back to the idea that people who spend their entire careers working in some sort of government, regard tax dollars as not their own money and other governmental entities tax collections (even though they may include your own citizens) as foreign investment.
These signals of stubbornness and hubris further demonstrate a need for an inventory reduction of city management. There are a number of competent and hard-working folks working in administrative positions at the second and third level of city government. Some of these folks seem to have a better understanding of the pulse of the community and do not have the need to create monuments, the cost of which deny other city servants the tools they need to service the community.
Perhaps some pruning at the top will give them the opportunity.
