Idiots

I just need to vent today.

There are almost 90,000 people living in my city, and I just learned that the city doesn't have its own police department. Perhaps that is why crime is rampant in the community. Apparently, the city pays the county more than $7 million a year to patrol the streets and lock up the bad guys. I say that's a poor way of handling things, and I have to question how many resources the county actually provides for that $7 million. After all, there's probably very little oversight coming from the city, which can't seem to do anything without botching it horribly.

It's been this way since the city incorporated a decade ago. They had a policy that anyone who wanted a sidewalk could have one. So they poured the concrete. Now we have blocks where half of the houses have sidewalks and half do not. They had the sense to change that policy recently, but they haven't bothered to finish any of the silly-looking partial sidewalks that are found all around the city.

The idiots also designed the city with no central business district. As a result, lots of businesses opted to locate to the west of the city in another community. Of course, that's lost tax dollars. It also means that I can't get anything without driving out of town. There's no mall here, and it's pretty much par for the course as you think of all the places you'd like to go.

They also designed the city's roads to cut directly through neighborhoods. As a result, cars race 50mph down streets that look like they should be part of a subdivision.

To top all of this off, the county school board now is announcing that, oops, it has to cut tons of jobs because they're apparently going to be $13 over budget for the next school year. They claim that the housing market is dying. But the truth is that probably 20 percent of these houses didn't exist three years ago. I'm sure a look at their budget would show that it increased 50 percent for every 10 percent of population growth. The people are idiots. They have all of their money wrapped up in lawsuits and ridiculous construction projects. They actually declined to accept a bid on a new school only to accept a much higher bid from the same contractor three months later, when construction costs soared. They pay teachers less than most districts in the area, so it's not as if they have all of their money wrapped up in salaries. And there was a story just a week ago talking about how the superintendent has done such a great job that she's likely to get a big raise this year.

They're idiots. All of them. Nothing bothers me more than incompetence. But I can accept it when I'm shopping at Walmart. This, I'm afraid, I cannot accept.

 

My brother and his partner just built a house in that community, BeerMan.

My question to them: "Why?"

 

I have found that government and public schools, while necessary, have more than their share of incompetency.

And while we're ranting, what pisses me off happened to me the yesterday. Here I am, a little one-man show from a weekly, interviewing with pen and paper a hometown boy who made good at the state track meet. In comes Mr. Daily sports editor from a paper 35 miles away, thrusts tape recorder into athlete's face, and takes over. He gave me a "Who the fuck are you" look when he did it. Gawd, I hope you folks aren't like that.
Lord, give me strength. I was a red hunt cair away from turning the fucker's lights out.

 

should have... for sport if nothing else.

 

Well, I hate to speculate. But homes are a tad cheaper than when you move closer to the big city. I believe I saw figures recently that showed most people in the area can't actually afford their homes. That is to say that they're spending more than the recommended high of 30 percent of their income on housing.

If you make $40,000 per year, you're not supposed to spend more than $1,000 per month on a mortgage. The problem is that you can't get much for $1,000, as is probably the case in a lot of communities. So lots of people are going up to about $1,200 per month, and that allows them to purchase a decent home as long as they purchase in a shitburg like mine and not in the areas where people would actually enjoy living.

 

One suggestion: Move

If you can't stand where you live then get out. If there are more positives about the place than negatives and you want to stay, then stop complaining.

Complaining only makes things worse.

 

What do you know? You're just an SID. ;-)

Actually, my wife was just released from her job, so now's the perfect time. She had hoped to work for the school district in which we live, but they announced today that they'll be cutting $10,000 from the budget by way of firing more than 200 employees, including some teachers and assistant principals. So, she has to pay $100 next week to go to a job fair while knowing that the district has a hiring freeze in place.

 

But I thought the school district was only $13 over budget for next year...

 

Well, it won't be when they're done making cuts. Of course, that was supposed to be $13 million. This year, I felt like I was baby-sitting an entire school during my Big Brother visits at a local elementary school. The aides are content to let the kids swarm to me, which they do because I'm just that darned cool. In the fall, apparently, there won't be any aides.

 

New homes are the blight of local governemnt. They automatically need police and fire services, and many times they will dump children into the school system. These new homes will not cover the costs of the extra services with their tax money for at least a decade.

Wal Marts and big box stores are what you want to see going up, or a large business going in (like the central offices of AOL or a Texas Motor Sppedway going in.

 

If they've received the tax dollars for 10 years without bolstering services, what are they doing with the money? And, actually, every child dumped into the school system adds to the money that a school receives. The get money based upon the student population.

 

It's about $7,000 in state revenue per kid. Considering that 1,000 new kids will fill an elementary school, you cannot even build a school for them with that state revenue. A new elementary school costs between 15-20 mil to build, so you are in the hole right away about 8 mil. You put 80 staff members in this school at 50k a pop (you have to count health benefits) so there goes 4 mil per year. The utilities for this school is about 100k a year and we have not even started talking about school supplies like books.

Schools and county government do waste money, but they do need to spend a lot as well.