If Special Service Area Tax commissioner Al Goldberg had his way, he wouldn't stop at the Mile of Murals project - he'd keep doing murals with tax payer money for the "next ten or eleven years."
Goldberg just wants to keep spending and spending, with SSA tax payer money, as he says, "Murals Forever!" "Just keep on doing it!" That's Al Goldberg's main motto.
What became clear at last nights meeting, that's before I left when Rob Moriarty demanded talk about world issues, is this mural project is a Special Service Area Tax payer waste. DevCorp North has found yet another way to throw money down the drain. All the while acting like they care about the neighborhood. Which they don't.
According to Goldberg, he wants to "Set the bar high". He wants the "Community input". But, only 20 people showed up. Mostly it was the same ole players - making the same ole decisions.
Out of the 20 people in attendance, nine were either part of DevCorp North, part of the Chicago Public Arts Project or the Alderman's office. Some community. Just 11 souls representing all the community members of Rogers Park. That's it.
So, long story short, Goldberg wants to do a mural a year, block-by-block. Then go back and do it again. From what I gathered, he wants this mural to extend outside of the Special Service Area #24 boundaries too. As Goldberg said, "Murals Forever - just keep doin' it'.
BLOGNOTES: As for local artist submissions. There were none.
How many of my readers went to this meeting? Well, that's about how the meeting for the mural went tonight.
Rob Moriarty (the third host of the meeting) isn't a artist. He's a psychologist. All he wanted to talk about is how we feel about the area. Kind of like a brain-storming session. Then he put the group answers on a big board.
Here's what the group thought about the neighborhood last night. Depressed. Fear. Isolation. To avoid. Walled in. Drama.
Then, of course, Katy Hogan and Al Goldberg, the two commissioners had to steer a word in their direction. They used the word "belonging." That sums the Special Service Area tax up pretty well. What money DevCorp North doesn't pilfer, belongs to Katy Hogan and Al Goldberg. And the rest of us can go screw ourselves.
7 comments:
A little early morning blog information.
Since I posted this story less than 2 hours ago, 278 people have read it.
Over 10 times the number of people that attended the meeting last night.
And the days just begun.
Katie Hogan and Michael James are a cancer on this neighborhood.
RPBooster (retired)
Whereas, Michael James has a serious infatuation with George Bush -
and whereas, his impersonators of George Bush, ( The Billionaires Club)
therefore, my two cents is, Michael james is George Bush.
Why, why, why? Do we really need to identify real human beings we know in our community as a "cancer?" That's childish, more than crosses the line of human decency, and should have been deleted.
Regularly, I am in group or 1-on-1 conversations with neighbors talking about local issues. The chat devolves when someone - and yes, I'm no saint, I've done it also - fails to overcome the anger we feel and our combative instincts. In private and personal conversation we spit out a nasty insult or even a disgusting epithet about someone we oppose. I can't hang with that kind of talk very long, and I am appalled to see it in print, which seems to validate it as acceptable social conduct.
For the record, I don't have a personally motivated hate against the people whose activities I oppose. I do hate what they do or haven't done when I expected otherwise. The hate-mongering here is a roadblock to getting people listen to each other - those we support and those we don't. What is really more productive is to speak to the merits of an issue or lodge criticisms of the actions people take.
Over the years, I've posted these sentiments here before. I don't expect to change anyone's mind anymore. I just want us all to know that everyone who posts here isn't always a "hater" or a "complainer" for the sake of complaining.
There's is so much hate and anger in this community that I think we all are losing. Every moment that we accept hate and anger instead of reason is a moment that progress is delayed and denied.
Good report, Craig. I was at the meeting, too. It was indeed a waste of time. I got the whole thing on video and will be presenting clips of it over the next few days.
In the same day, posts about apathy and about the mural project. In general, I guess I tend to try to stay out of someone else's way when they are doing something, anything, positive. If Goldberg were fund raising to paint our cement walls, and had a plan to KEEP them painted, I would say more power to him.
But that's not what they're doing, is it? Moore and DevCorp North levied a property tax increase on Morse Ave, and now they are using extremely limited public dollars for this. So the mural project, nice as it may be, opens itself up to criticisms of how this got to be our priority, is this the best use of our limited resources at this time, are blank walls our biggest problem?
With all due respect Michael Harrington -
While I feel zero affection and even less respect for Katie Hogan, Michael James, Joe Moore, Jim Genderske, Tom Westgard, David Fagus, the DevCorp scammers or all the rest of their little pack of political jackals, turncoats and trough slurpers, what I said had nothing to do with hate. I meant what I said literally and with precision.
A cancer is a malignant illness - a deformed growth - that eats away at the health and well being of the host, and eventually destroys both the host and itself. It is both an illness, and a metaphor for failure. In this case an illness and failure of the spirit.
I believe that sums up quite clearly and correctly what these people are doing to our community with their politics, their hypocritical programs, their secrecy, their lies, their divisiveness, their dishonesty, thievery and self-dealing. What does it mean when the self-proclaimed civic leaders or the elected-by-theft political representatives (in quotes of course) of a community illicit stomach churning revulsion in over half of the citizenry? Every shooting, every gooning, every innocent child burned to death in a slum, every two faced politician lie I hear, absolutely turns mine. How about you Michael Harrington? Feel that lump in your throat?
These people don’t deserve a response as honest as hate.
And they ARE a cancer on our house.
BTW – (Craig you got it hear first)
I hear on the grape vine that Joe “line my nest” Moore was in Washington last week on vacation with his mid-life braces on the teeth girlfriend – and in between doing the things that boys and girls on vacation do, he took a bit of time off to do something a little bit more serious …… HE WAS INTERVIEWING FOR JOBS!!!! Interviewing for a new job in Wash DC!!! ... Oh that it could only be true what those little birds told me ....
Maybe he's hoping to jump ship before Gordon's lawsuit walks him down the path that leads to an incitement ....
RPBooster (retired)
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