32° and Cloudy
Image
Truth on delay in Greenway funding
Kevin Forma from community development wrote the agenda item including spending money on the dog shelter building.
The building that is supposed to get a new roof is adjacent to the dog shelter but unrelated. It is used to store and maintain groundskeeping equipment. Forma made a mistake.
No one seems to be throwing him under the bus. It feels a bit like when no one from city government vetted Rod Davis or spoke a word about Tom Tedesco or Alan Booker.
The real culprit is the mayor who was not there to answer questions Wednesday. If speakers are too hard on the sensitive mayor, he also could have sent the city administrator, Kenny Tompkins or Forma to the meeting to answer questions.
Instead, a simple mistake led to a month delay. Now it will geht passed 3-2 in April. The only question is who votes no other than Dontā Myles. Will it be Brian Archie or David Zajac? Zajac appears as if he may be suddenly growing a spine because he would like to be reelected.
The other issue is that after a lifetime of military and corporate service, Council Chairperson Jim Perry still doesn’t understand how to run a meeting or Robert’s Rules of order.
Car problems
Our car crisis is still unresolved. We have been down to one car for a month.
A few observations:
- It has been cold for bike riding, especially the other day with 40 mph winds. The experiment to survive with one car has failed.
- I think we have concluded the 2017 VW Passat is not worth fixing. With 87,000, a new battery and a turbocharger in the last few months. Now it needs a transmission. And perhaps an air conditioning compressor. VW is the worst car company in the world. To fix it would be to spend $7,000 on a car worth $10,000 at best and wait for what goes wrong next.
- Leasing remains the most expensive way to buy a car other than spending $5,000 at an auction or in a private party sale.
- The likely answer is we will buy another car, maybe today.
Love of the birds
It is the off season for tour business but I had a family of 6 last Sunday for Cave of the Winds. They were from Kenosha, Wisc., just outside Chicago.
When I have guests of African American Heritage, I always include a bunch on our Underground Railroad Heritage as well as some details on Niagara Falls today.
I also always talk at this time of year, about the birds. What I didn’t expect was a 15-year old young man wearing a basketball jersey to say he wanted to feed the birds at Three Sisters Island.
The whole family was into it, but while the rest of the family went out to look at the power intakes he stayed behind.
Twenty minutes later, the young man in the basketball jersey was still standing there, hand outstretched, livestreaming chickadees with a beaming smile.
Witch Hazel blooming
At that same spot by Three Sisters Island, the witchhazel is blooming. Depending on which species, it blooms either in late fall or very early spring with small greenish/yellow flowers that look like Eva Niklas riding a broom.
