Not On Our Dime

reported by Ron Crawford.

According to a recent Tribune article, as much as $35 million in federal money could help pay for the proposed Los Osos sewer if an effort by Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara, is successful.

No, no, no. Not on our dime.

Look, Los Osos, just because your CSD Board majority wants to throw your tax money at a multi-million dollar park that you have already voted that you do not want to pay for, and your Board majority can't answer why there's a park in your sewer project, doesn't mean that we should throw tax money at their mistakes too.

I mean, come on! An amphitheater in a sewer plant? And you want us to help pay for that?

Capps said recently that money for Los Osos' proposed $150 million sewer was authorized by a congressional subcommittee.

I'm going to take a wild guess here and say that the congressional subcommittee wasn't fully informed about the amphitheater, or the public restrooms, parking lot, dog park, community gardens, and everything else needed to accommodate the park, like the wave wall, and buried facilities, and odor scrubbing. $35 million? Sounds like Los Osos is going to need a lot more than that just for the park portion of their sewer project. And they want that to come from American taxpayers? Nice try.

Los Osos, you need a sewer, not a park. If your CSD Board can come up with a plan that includes a viable, bare-bones (translated: no park) treatment facility, then I'll argue that the Feds should pick-up at least half the cost. After all, they're picking up the tab for sewer projects in Iraq (I'm going to take another wild guess here and say that NONE of those systems include an amphitheater). But until then, I argue that the $35 million would be better spent elsewhere, like on the families of the service men and women that have been killed in Iraq.

"It's not a hard and fast guarantee," Capps spokeswoman Shannon Lohrmann said about the Federal funding. "But this is a great first step." For the sake of American taxpayers, let's hope it's the only step... at least for this flawed project.

'til next time. (article quoted by permission of the author.)