March Madness Gives Way to MoCo's "Frivolous Four"
March in MoCo, MD saw yet more frivolous spending by a County Council determined to increase debt, taxes and regulations on the next generation of its residents. In the spirit of the upcoming Final Four and the near-completion of "March Madness", here are the final "frivolous four" purchases by our "dear leaders" in the prior year. Remember - it is our money, not theirs:
From the "East" Region: County Executive Ike Leggett's stately mansion/manor sits on a large patch of land in MoCo's eastern district. And we don't begrudge him for it. But what taxpayer's should begrudge is the Executive's $8,700 publicly-financed trip to Cuba - and a full week prior to our very own President's trip to the Communist-run island! As of now, nobody has seen a full accounting of the trip or the expenses that were paid. And regardless of what was spent and where -- how is a trip to Cuba, by the County Executive and others -- in any way beneficial to the taxpayers and residents of Montgomery County at this time?
From the "West' Region: In attempting to "solve" the crisis of a Poolesville man paying for and setting up his own personal ice skating rink in memory of his daughter, County commissars and other zoning representatives have reached a tentative deal to build a "$70 to $140K" public (taxpayer) financed ice skating rink in Poolesville, MD. This being MoCo, the MCYRs are willing to place a large bet that any such "synthetic ice rink" will be built well over a $140K budget. This is a needless expenditure that solves a problem that really didn't exist. The individual landowner in question was generous with his land, time, and money and had allowed all members of the community to use his ice rink as needed.
From the "South" Region: The $140 million dollar tab on the Silver Spring Transit Center just grew a bit more last month, when the Executive begged for a few "million more" to be given to a law firm representing the County as it tries to claw back something from the developers who produced the shoddy product. This is a never-ending bad spend story. For $140 million dollars, potentially 2-3 new elementary schools could have been built to help our students and teachers and prevent future over-crowding.
From the "North" Region: County Executive Ike Leggett is obsessed with wasting money on the BRT (bus rapid tomato?), the Purple Line, and other terrible transit ideas and schemes. Instead of truly addressing our roads and bridges and public sewage systems with investment, money keeps being allocated for a bus system that will not do anything to solve bad traffic on 270 or northern corridors. Even though his spending proposal on the BRT was dramatically pared back because of a lack of tax money coming in, even one cent on this project is penny-foolish.
