Wasted tax dollars
I hate to see our tax dollars go to waste when there are so many real needs that go unfulfilled. Our roads have deteriorated beyond any plausible excuse by the Supervisors and bureaucrats at Civic Center, yet they continue to piss away our funds on fluff and self-serving nonsense. Supervisor Steve Kinsey’s MTC is competing with Mark Zuckerberg to see who can build the grandest edifice in San Francisco, all with our bridge tolls and highway funds. This misuse of public funds borders on thievery. We should empanel a Federal Grand Jury to investigate this misuse of tax dollars. Our roads are crying for help.
Nine-hundred dollars a day per person to house a handful of kids at juvenile hall. At that rate we could send them to Harvard and put them up at the Four Seasons on Boston Common. Yet the county is kicking out the Helen Vine Center from the old Honor Farm in favor of some injured animals, when there are injured human beings who are really helped by the detox and counseling center being thrown out on the street.
I propose that we welcome the use of our empty, yet well-appointed, juvenile facility to the Helen Vine Center in a mixed-use capacity, ignoring the ruffled feathers of the existing staff and civic center bureaucrats.
We have an infuriating homeless problem, yet the Sheriff’s facility at Marin Commons is cavernous with huge empty offices, extensive grand hallways, unused restrooms, kitchens and meeting halls. The place is so huge and so empty it seems the place was built by mistake or rather purchased by the County Supervisors by mistake.
I once again propose using the Marin Commons as a mixed-use facility to get our homeless off the street and into some meaningful rehabilitation.
Let’s stop kowtowing to the Civic Center gang and address some of these problems forcefully with some ingenuity and guts. This is our county, these are our facilities and our money. Stop being afraid of our bureaucratic brethren, they are, after all, our employees who work for the U.S. Think about this when you go to pay your property tax bill. Let’s start taking care of business.
—Alex Easton-Brown
