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Jim Herd
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Your daily Muni metphor...
Continuing a long, if not proud, tradition of knuckling under to whatever the hell the mayor wants, Muni's board yesterday voted to do away with Sunday parking meters.
This was utterly and totally predictable. Muni's board is not an entity to which anyone should extend the courtesy of taking seriously. If you do, you must also buy into the notion of the dead rising from their graves to vote in Chicago or 105 percent of the electorate throwing in with Kim Jong-Un.
The mayor doesn't "ask" for anything. Press releases were ready even prior to the vote.
The notion of our "transit-first city" siding with transit experts over politicians is laughable. In fact, the very same vote to do away with hitting up drivers on a Sunday also called for jacking up Muni fares by 12.5 percent. Every day.
Message to Muni's riders: Piss off.
All told, this is how the transportation system might be operated at a lunatic asylum. The city and its transit agency continue to throw benefits at our city's wealthiest while taking from our poorest. City politicos continue to find ways to drain money from the system while indulging in the populist notion of making it free for larger swaths of society.
That math doesn't work, hence the looming $500 million Muni bond. Mayor Ed Lee, Reiskin, and various Muni board members were reading from the same script. Why irk the city's voters with niggling things like Sunday meters when two-thirds of them are needed to approve a pending mega-bond?
"We can give up a few million dollars if it helps us secure $1.5 billion," Reiskin told the
Ex.
What a strange notion this is, upon even minimal reflection. Yes, voters, let us reward an agency that handles its finances like a dyslexic schizophrenic. Let's give generously to the people that never fail to remind riders that you're a sucker for believing in the system.
Message from Muni's riders: Piss off.
