New Bus Garage In Baghdad Or Janesville

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The City of Janesville plans to spend nearly $6 million on a new transit system bus garage and under different circumstances that would seem excessive. You see, regardless of where the money comes from, the garage must meet a boatload of Federal and State environmental standards including handicapped accessibility and have expensive equipment for mechanical repairs such as giant hydraulic lifts. But the real kicker to this deal is the premise that the Federal government will likely pay up to 80 percent of the total cost. I say go for it, and go for it big time.

The Janesville Gazette editorialized that the city should instead build some flimsy metal barn shed with pits instead of lifts and with community shower stalls for employees. If the city goes along with the Gazette, they may as will build an open-air garage. Believe me, you don’t want pits for mechanical repairs, they’re barely adequate even for oil changes and hinder a technician to complete even basic inspections of the suspension and wheel assemblies.

But this is not the reason of course why I’m writing. It is the idea that the person in charge of our Federal domestic spending has shortchanged communities across the country and diverted precious dollars to his bloody war in Iraq. If Janesville doesn’t take the max on what is available to them, it will just leave more money for Bush to pass out to his private contractor buddies in Iraq to build new bus garages there.

If the President of the United States has no qualms about requesting an extra $3.2 billion just this week alone for Iraq in the face of hundreds of billions in debt that he created, should Janesville worry about requesting a few million for a bus garage?

JG Editorial Excerpt:
Janesville expects the Federal government to pick up about 80 percent of the cost. Well then, that makes it better.
No, it doesn’t. It’s still tax money. And while it doesn’t come out of city taxpayers pockets directly, it’s still our money. Have you noticed the federal deficit lately?

Certainly as I’ve written in the past, the Gazette is entitled to their opinion but, they have a lot of nerve to hold the federal deficit over local domestic needs when their man Bush deliberately ran up the deficit by spending nearly a half-trillion dollars outside the U.S. economy.

The city council has made some wrong-headed moves in the recent past and this won't make up for any of them but the city of Janesville could sure use a $4.5 million booster shot into the local economy. Providing the Federal money is there, don't do this on the cheap. It's a no-brainer.