Ward 6 incumbent Republican Fred Ronstadt announced last year that he was not taking part in the City Clean Elections program in order to “save taxpayers’ money”. (The real reason was to rake in unlimited private cash while undercutting campaign finance reform, but that’s another story.)

The Star reports today that Fred seems to love to waste taxpayer money when it suits him. Last September, he joined a council majority to relocate the downtown Greyhound bus station to the corner of 6th Avenue and Toole (a site agreed to by years of citizen input from neighboring residents, businesses, the City, and Greyhound itself). At the same meeting, Fred contradicted himself (and, in a continuing pattern, ignored the citizen consensus) by ordering an utterly unnecessary $159,000 study of alternative locations for the Greyhound station, whose location he had just voted to place at 6th & Toole.

Well, the study is out, and the best place to relocate the Greyhound station is (drum roll, please…) at 6th & Toole! So now we are where we should have been a year ago, only we are $159,000 poorer and we have delayed the reconstruction of the 4th Avenue Underpass for one more year, increasing the cost of that project by millions and delaying the return of the streetcar into Downtown–a key component of downtown revitalization.

Nice work, Fred! I’d say it’s time for Tucson’s voters to send a clear message in November. Reduce government waste: Vote Fred out of office.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 3rd, 2005 at 7:47 am and is filed under Downtown, Politician Watch, Respecting Citizens, Transportation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.