It's one thing to throw a public hissy fit and babble that the CTran board is "dysfunctional," said the ethics violator/liar primarily responsible for that dysfunction.
And, it's one thing to make a foolish public pronouncement, jamming a stick in the eye of every other board member.
And it's even another thing to claim there's no money to fix the streets in Vancouver...
But it's quite another to make a policy decision without, apparently, even discussing it with fellow board members or city councilmen/women.
It takes a special kind of arrogance to play the Yul Brenner part of Pharaoh of Vancouver: "So let it be written... so let it be done."
But hanging your fellow councilors out to dry... while advocating an unneeded tax increase and ticket surcharge... all to stroke his ego in an effort to get his monument to stupidity built... as if... while the streets of Vancouver go begging.
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Vancouver Mayor Tim Leavitt said today he will schedule a city council workshop to discuss paying annual maintenance and operations costs for light rail.
Calling the C-Tran Board of Directors a "dysfunctional" group -- of which he and two other members of the city council belong -- Leavitt said the city needs to step up and pay for light rail, planned as part of the Columbia River Crossing project that would replace the Interstate 5 Bridge.
"We as the urban center, we’re on a different trajectory than the rest of the county," Leavitt said. "We have a vision of how we are going to handle growth, create jobs and create opportunities to live, work and play."
"Unfortunately, the C-Tran Board is dysfunctional and seems to have lost sight of the difference between urban and rural public transit," Leavitt said.
Leavitt's plans for a workshop were first reported in Willamette Week and came as a surprise to other members of the council, as a workshop on light rail has not been put on their calendars.
The Willamette Week article is headlined, "City of Vancouver Officials Want to Pay for Running the Columbia River Crossing's Light Rail."
That was news to Councilor Jack Burkman.
"The mayor is speaking for himself and not for council," Burkman said. "We have not talked about this."
The WW article said the workshop is scheduled for Sept. 9. Councilors typically have workshops before Monday meetings, and the 9th is one of three Mondays the council meets in September. The council also meets on the 16th and the 23rd.
Burkman said he's not prepared to support a workshop on Sept. 9.
“I’ve got to hear what’s going on, because I’m in the dark," Burkman said. "I would have preferred that we would have talked about this Monday night (during council communications). We all know what the issue is," he said.
Workshops are informational only, and the council doesn't take a formal vote or accept public testimony.
Councilor Bart Hansen, who serves on the C-Tran Board of Directors with Leavitt and Councilor Larry Smith, was also caught off guard by today's news.
“We haven’t talked about this," Hansen said. "Don’t get me wrong, I've supported light rail all along, but this is news to me.”More:
Yup. It take a special kind of moron to handle political matters this way.
Brilliance, I'd say.
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