daverea.com

Yesterday, the Rochester City Council released a report that chastized our [expletive deleted] mayor for gutting the police department despite consistently rising crime rates. On the very same day (still yesterday!) Mayor Johnson wrigged his way to the business end of a podium, aimed himself in the general direction of the TV lights, and told us all that the #1 priority for the City of Rochester is getting our fast ferry running again.

You see, the City of Rochester, and Monroe County, not to mention the People’s Republic of New York, have all dumped a lot of money into “our fast ferry”. Millions of dollars. And when the private venture that operates it shut it down last week, all of a sudden a lot of politicians got very upset. Now I’m all for having a ferry between here and Toronto. I’m all for successful business (ad)ventures and I’m all for saying “nice job” when something works out.

But something strikes me funny about this little situation that our elected critters have gotten us all into. Our city schools are near the worst in the state. Only Buffalo has crappier public education. The district is being audited by the Department of Education. There have been four home invasions this week, and all of them involved armed thugs and tied-up residents in neighborhoods outside the crime belt. The police department has just issued a press release encouraging parents to walk their children to their school bus stops, since “this is the season for sexual predators”.

Yet our “top priority” is a shuttle boat that (until last week) ran back and forth between here and Toronto. No, it’s not getting our county’s $2M budget deficit under control. No, it’s not reappropriating misdirected funds away from stupid projects and toward the police department, or the schools. No, it’s not repealing worthless laws that require residents to lock up their guns (and their safety).

I have a grand idea. I already pay fees for water, and electricity, and sewers, and trash collection. How’s about you cut my taxes in half. Put the half I give you toward filling pot-holes and trimming the shrubs at the park. I’ll invest the other half in an alarm system for my home, the collection plate at my church (because they give my money to worthy charities, so you don’t have to give my money to crackheads) and some plane tickets to visit the states that I could to move to once I finally have enough money to leave this socialist barnyard of a state.