I’m mum on my agency, but let me mention that I just witnessed a heated discussion of minute changes to our health benefits package by people who put a lot less discernable effort into their work! LOL

As a city employee, it really irks me that I have to be a union member whether I like it or not. Not to mention the fact that city employees get paid way more than their private sector counterparts with almost no accountability to show results – this place is a circus of overpaid goof-offs, which doesn’t give me much motivation. As a result of the well-intentioned civil service & unionized system, city government in NYC has turned into a hulking Rube Goldberg machine capable of losing 99% of input into a bureaucratic black hole.

But the pain of doing it in a splipshod, developer driven way with no clear ground rules or organizing principles is not inevitable. Or at least I would like to think that it isn’t.

Great post.

I also sympathize with labor, because despite the fact that I’m a yuppie, I’m in the same boat as anyone who must work for a living — no employment security and no real wage increases in about a decade.

I also sympathize with people who are finding they can’t afford to live in the neighborhoods they know and love.

But I have no sympathy for thugs, and I’m not sympathetic to people who rush to the side of developers to support these projects in the name of jobs and affordable housing. They should know better.

Even if they believed the rosey economic projections and “guarantees” of affordable housing, do they really think that becoming dependent on the table scraps of the real estate elites is the best way to build a sustainable future? Are we going to absolve our government of the responsibility to come up with strategic solutions to the shrinking pool of living wage jobs and affordable places to live in this city? Do we give them a pass as long as the flaks supporting the project of the moment repeat empty promises enough so that we believe them?

Perhaps I don’t want to know the answer. If our nation can’t deal with our fossil fuel problem even though it’s been staring us in the face for 50 years, then why would deal with the related issue of how we best use our limited space. Most Americans still be lieve in unlimited everything. We don’t like constraints.

Still, althought it’s probably just naive optimism on my part, I sense a “smart development” movement coalescing city wide. I’m seeing more people from other neighborhoods and boroughs at the public forums on Atlantic Yards, and they are making connections between that project and whatever project threatens their neighborhood’s quality of life.

I need to do my part and fight for good development everywhere, not just in my immediate vicinity.

Thanks for reporting on the NASCAR meeting. As always, you are leading by example.