The Emperor's New Stimulus
By Paul Moomjean 06/11/2009
When many of us were children we were told the tale of the Emperor’s New Clothes. Remember? The Emperor paid a great fortune to have invisible clothes made and when he went out into public he realized he was actually just naked. He ended paying a lot for what seemed great but turned out to be a facade.
On Monday, June 1, I went before the Simi Valley City Council to speak about my disgust in their facade of a plan to use $100,000 of President Obama’s stimulus money to help build a $150,000 memorial for those who died in the September 12, 2008 Chatsworth train crash. According to the Ventura County Star about 10 people will be employed to build the facility to be built at the Simi Valley Metrolink drop off station on Los Angeles Avenue, and the memorial will be done by September 12th of this year. I guess my question is two fold. How does this “stimulate” the economy and what exactly are we trying to memorialize with this project?
While I disagreed with President Obama’s stimulus package, I do believe the intention was to create money by using money. Besides the 10 people who will be put to work, how is this helping Simi Valley, Ventura County, or the state of California? It isn’t. It’s classic government wasteful spending attached to an emotional cause in hopes of photo opportunities in the September editions of the newspapers. After the project is completed there will be no more money being used to help create financial gains within the city.
In fact, Obama’s grant doesn’t have to be spent until 2012 and who knows what could happen over the next few years. Why not hire numerous people to landscape city parks or add onto the Library. Many citizens use those city areas, but only a few people use the train on a regular basis, and most of them aren’t going to sit down at great length on the newly installed benches since their train comes at a designated time. When I explained to the city council that very few will ever use or see the memorial, their only response was to sit quietly and wait for my time to expire. I won’t be the bit surprised if the only thing to financially gain from this memorial project is the city’s budget, as it can use the money to pay city employees already on salary and not dip more into their building and development budgets.
The city council also had the audacity to suggest that Metrolink pay for their memorial. And why exactly would Metrolink be interested in paying for a memorial that reminds people of the fatal possibilities of riding on their trains? Reminding people that they could die any day on their product might not be what Metrolink wants people thinking when getting aboard.
Of course, this leads to a more philosophical argument. What are the intentions behind memorials? These men and women were not soldiers who gave their lives to our country, missionaries sending food packages to children, or firefighters heading to fight wildfires. These were regular people on their way to and from work. Government funds must be wisely spent and justified, and not every death can be memorialized by local or federal government funds. If the city wants to fundraise the total amount through private financing, then that can be justified, but just as we don’t use governmental grants to fund memorials for every car crash victim, we cannot use this stimulus grant, even as our hearts break for the loved ones whose family died on that day.
I write this as warning to Ventura County. Read your newspapers and know where your stimulus money is heading. Make sure your city council is using stimulus money, regardless of your opinions on it, to actually create ways to maintain a constant flow of money. Call your city council members and find out their intentions, before they decide to build pet projects with your money. Much like the naked Emperor who paid for no clothing at all, soon there will be an expensive memorial reminding us of something few will actually see.
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