Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Urban Redistribution Authority

Today, I read this article in the Post Gagette. It made me so mad I could spit. Or cry. I'm not sure which. Strawberry way will probably be drowning her sorrows in IC Light and Cigarettes when she reads it. Poor Strawberry. I wanted to write about this immediately in hopes that Mayor Luke would be able to do something about it.

Basically, what they are saying is that our beloved URA (that's the Urban Redevelopment Authority) just sold the old downtown GC Murpphy builing for $2.3 million. And, that the sale price is LESS than what they paid for it! How stupid is this? An agency of our bankrupt city is buying buildings, then selling them for a loss? Actually, according to the article, the URA paid $6.28 million for the properties!! So, they have sold it for about 1/3 what they paid for it.

Well, I am going to rename the URA the Urban Retardation Authority! With no offense intended to people who are mentally retarded. They cannot help it because they are born that way. But, the URA is behaving like a bunch of retards, and they were not born that way, so they have no excuse.

The URA claims that, by selling the property at a significant loss, they are turning a bad situation around. Of course, it was a stupid lawyer who said that, so what do you expect? Basically, they are just selling the property to Millcraft Industries for a song. Speaking of songs, it's like they think they are taking a frown and turning it upside down! But they are not! This still really makes me frown!

This would be like if you bought a vacant old house in Lawrenceville for, let's say, $65,000. Then, you just sat on it for a couple of years, letting it get even more run down and then re-sold it to a couple of crack dealers for $22,000! Why would you be so stupid as to do this? And, what are those crack dealers going to do with the house? Probably turn it into some kind of crack whore house for all their friends. How can this be turning a bad situation around? It would be just like that damn casino/whorehouse Don Barden is building for his gambling buddies on the Northside. God only knows how much the URA is paying Barden to build that thing! Or, you know, Millcraft already built that fancy Steakhouse in the former (brand new) Lazarus building (which the City and the URA basically paid for in the first place, then gave to Millcraft). The Steakhouse is just a place for the rich Millcraft crack whore friends of Jack Piatt to hang out. No regular folks can afford to go there, so it might as well be a crack whore house, which regular god-fearing people also do not go to. We just want to be able to go to a nice Denny's or Eat 'n Park and get a happy meal after church like real people. Does the URA do anything to help make this possible for us? NO! I would also be a bit happier if the URA would give somebody money to build some decent gay bars, then just let us LesBiGays and our creative class friends fix up everything real nice. But they do not do that either! Nope, it's just fancy places for rich people. Geez, you'd think that the Republican Loser DeSantis was running this City instead of Luke. Well, I know Luke wants somewhere to go after Church, even if, as a Catholic, he is not a true Christian.

Anyway, what is happening is that the URA basically gave 4 million dollars of the taxpayers' hard-earned money to Millcraft industries to build another fancy "redevelopment." Way to go URA! I do not like this waste of money at all. I am just really upset about it and I am wondering if Mayor Luke knows about it? Surely he would not let this happen!

URA's Shameful $4 million giveaway to Millcraft leads me to my second new name for the URA: Urban Redistribution Authority (because they redistribute money to rich people).

I hope Mayor Luke can put a stop to this madness and waste of public money. I know he wants to. Luke, are you reading this?