Glass City Jungle

In the regular feature This Strikes Us in this week’s edition of the Sojourner’s Truth the focus is on the presidential election. It’s stated that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been “quietly inserted her own name” to be considered. Which is interesting especially given the public statement of her spokesman that she is not interested. Of course it would not be the first time this has happened, so perhaps some of us media and blog were too quick on the Condi factor; time will tell. Still focusing on McCain the fact that he went to Memphis to honor Martin Luther King but has opposed honoring him with a holiday in Arizona and nationally is mentioned. Then the attention turns to Obama versus Clinton where while the editorial states Clinton does have a chance of getting the nomination also states:

The fact remains, however, that given the many similarities in the two candidates’ positions, one would expect that Hillary could see some value in leaving hope alive for a Democratic president to take the reins in 2009, even if that someone is not her.

That’s not the way we expect to see the rest of this campaign play out.

As is his usual column style, former Mayor Jack Ford touches on several topics in his My View feature. The topic of street improvement has been one that has been discussed recently and Ford shares his thoughts:

Toledo City Councilman Michael Ashford and Mayor Carty Finkbeiner continue to grapple over spending on street and curb repair. There is not enough money to go around and the mayor does go out of his way to limit city goodies to Ashford’s district.

But remember, Ashford’s district is the “travel through” district from downtown to the suburbs. Ashford’s district gets beat up every day because of where it’s situated. Some leeway should be made for districts, and their streets, that are subject to overuse.

More information on Ashford’s public demand for more street paving dollars is reported in Councilman Ashford Calls for More Central City Street Repaving. I don’t disagree with Councilman Ashford when it comes to the number of residential streets that need repair/repaving each year that are not done. I do disagree with him when it comes to the cost factor related to automation of trash collection. Whether we go for automation or not, most of the current garbage trucks need to be replaced and the difference between a non-automated truck and an automated truck has been stated to be around $20,000 per truck.

Then on to the topic of minority inclusion, Jack Ford touched on the topic of the Black and Veatch contract, former School Board member Larry Sykes has an Open Letter to Toledo City Council that asked in part:

I, along with other community leaders, encourage you to do the right thing by requesting an increase to the minority inclusion percentage starting at 18 percent on this project. We are basing this request on a number of factors. The minority citizen population exceeded 30 percent as of 2000 according to the U.S. Census Bureau. African Americans are the largest minority group in the City representing 23.5 percent of the population.

City Council approved the contract as it was with the 7% minority inclusion percentage that was allowed because it was an engineering contract as opposed to a construction contract. Had it been a construction contract it would have been higher from how it was explained at the last Toledo City Council meeting. While the letter was published after the vote took place, City Council did receive it prior to the vote.

Those are just a few of the articles in this week’s Sojourner’s Truth….