I have a different perspective on the rally held yesterday. Sure, vandalism, is a terrible thing. But holding a rally to decry it doesn’t exactly reach out to the people who did it. Midnight on a Sunday night might be the more opportune time methinks. But more importantly, the First Taxing District managed to wrest over $250k in legal fees, purportedly mostly about the sliver of land called Klondike Park. Add to that the unknown amount that the First Taxing District spent in legal fees the year before in its quixotic quest to keep water consumption usage out of the hands of the Water Pollution Authority. Another $25ok there? I bet its close.

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Another proposal that gained legs in the 2005-2007 council advances at the pace of government that I can only describe as the drip-drip that formulates a stalagmite. From the Hour:

Look for a television camera and beefed-up audio system in the Common Council chambers of City Hall in the future as part of a plan to televise council meetings.

Karen Del Vecchio, the city’s director of Information Technology, said two consultants walked through City Hall last month and bid on the project, which will be paid for using grant money.

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Amanda Brown has figured out that if she wants to have influence over the BOE, she needs to have a seat at the table. The 2005-2007 attempted the joint meeting of the BET, BOE and council, but due to the mysterious vagaries of scheduling conflicts (Corda) they never got off the ground. So Brown figures on creating an ordinance to formulate a special joint committee.

Interesting idea. But with the balance of the BOE shifting back towards common sense with common purpose, the obstacles of the past may not be present. The Hour got qutoes from the usual suspects on the idea, the recap:

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This is a video clip of about an hour, about the middle class. It’s riveting in part because most of the time when economic studies are done, they typically focus on the answering policy solutions to some of the more intractable problems in society. Think the decades long war on poverty, and all the social programs it spawned.

Elizabeth Warren chose to focus on the two parent, two child household, and compared (adjusted for inflation) the economic reality of a typical 1970 family versus the same family demographic in 2002. This is a single generation, your parents versus you essentially.

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