The Cleanup Question

I commented briefly on this in another post, but it's worth its own post at this point.

Last night, the City Council went off on the city's cleanup efforts. Mayor Lisa Wong defended it, pointing to costs and reimbursements.

As I said in my comment, I don't really want to go through a day of "council said, mayor said." It's repetitive and doesn't get to the heart of the matter.

Here's the real question: Is it worth the cost to clean up quick, or should the city go through the longer hoop-jumping to get reimbursed for the cleanup. It is, according to projections that no one is disclaiming, a $1.5 million question.

In a vacuum, of course you want a fast cleanup. I think you could make an argument right now, today, that coming up with $1.5M for a quick cleanup would be a chore for the city. Did any councilors say last night where they'd get the money from? Looking down the road, the governor this week looked for expanded cutting powers, with mid-year local aid cuts looking more and more likely. You can bank on cuts in next year's budget.

So, you can't answer the question in a vacuum. I'm guessing the councilors have gotten a lot of calls, and want it stopped. But can the city afford to pay for the work themselves? And if you think the federal government is flexible in its rules, ask Townsend how that's working out for them (that town is ineligible for fed reimbursement, because Middlesex County didn't reach the disaster minimum cost).

It's easy to call up a councilor and say "Goddamn it, the branches still aren't picked up and my street looks like crap." But that doesn't take into account the financial side of things. There might be money for this, but there's red tape to deal with first, like it or not. If DPW goes out and starts doing it tomorrow, you can pretty much forget about it.

So, does the city have $1.5M to clean up the mess? That appears to be the question of the day. I'm leaning toward the reimbursement process until someone can detail where the money is coming from.