The Seattle City Council’s decision to buy out Pronto, the failed bike share company, has many people more than a little frustrated with the far-Left group think dominating the city’s leaders. Not only is the plan a waste of millions of taxpayer dollars, starting with $1.4 million for the bailout, and then another $5 million more in 2017, and about $2 million each year thereafter, the money could obviously be used for far more pressing concerns facing the city.
One such concern is the budget shortages facing the Greenwood Food Bank. The Seattle Times reports:
“What’s closing — as if the North Seattle neighborhood hasn’t been through enough — is the Greenwood Food Bank. It offers free food and toiletries to about 2,000 poor households a month. The signs announcing the closure are printed in six languages.
“Last year the food bank lost its $53,000 in annual support from the City of Seattle. The city denied the appropriation when the Greenwood Food Bank didn’t make the cut in a new, competitive bidding process.”
As a result, the agency that runs the food bank is selling the land and the building to a developer.
KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson points out that the city’s willingness to “spend millions of dollars for a failed bicycle rental system that couldn’t possibly survive in the private marketplace because it doesn’t have any users” rather than appropriating a fraction of that cost to a food bank is an example of the “fake liberalism” that defines Seattle.
The Seattle Times’ Danny Westneat summed up the reasoning behind the city’s decision when he stated, “[Seattle] can’t not have bike share, for obvious eco-progressive credibility reasons.”
In the end, it’s all about liberals’ extreme “green” agenda that doesn’t really work, but looks like it does. And, it’s all at the expense of struggling families who could really use some government help.
What’s new? Just a different form of payoffs that don’t do a thing for anybody that truly has a need. Tax the poor by denying them services and waste money so the Libs can have a photo op to show how “green” ( stupid) they truly are….
Our city council is totally fiscally irresponsible with our money. I wonder how much credit card debt they in their personal accounts or maybe they just spend our money like there is no limits.
Wow, my son (who lives in the north end of King County) told me it was bad in Seattle, but I didn’t realize just how bad until I read this article. Seattle’s City Council is starting to sound and act like Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown of CA. “No amount of money is wasted if it makes us “look good” to the small minority of ‘green-eyed’ activists” seems to be their motto. I’m guessing that there are very few true business people on that Council, the acquisition of this bike boondoggle shows no good fiscal sense whatsoever, especially at the expense of citizens truly in need.
Pay the food bank. Dump the bikes.