Monday, July 24, 2006

Necessary and unnecessary projects

The City of Raleigh is now up to about $1 billion in debt for different projects in the last few years. Some are appropriate, others not so much. The new convention center is a "boondoggle". Water treatment plants and road widening are appropriate expenditures of taxpayer money. So called affordable housing projects (another form of welfare and government entitlement program), subsidising new hotels, and more park space are not necessarily appropriate. Parks, OK, maybe, but it is still a stretch for me on that one.

Now the company that developed the new North Hills wants the city to pay for a $75 million dollar parking deck at that facility. Hey, North Hills is gorgeous now. I used to live right around the corner in an apartment complex that has since been torn down and the property is being developed by that same company. A parking deck would be nice to have. Just not at taxpayer expense. The entire facility is a marvel of free enterprise. Let it continue to be so.

The N&O has an article on this.

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