It was definitely a warm one today, and from the sounds of it, we’ll be seeing an extended period of it, which I consider to be highly unusual compared to what a once ‘normal’ month of May would be like.
I was on pins and needles most of the morning over the thought of having to postpone a closing yet another day which was supposed to happen last week, but we finally got a clear to close shortly before then hour of Noon which was a big worry off my shoulders.
There were other calls which I had to make regarding some work needing to be done, and of course most of our contractors are getting themselves booked-up for the season. I did stop over to my ‘go to’ lumberyard to check on the availability of some items, and while in conversation with my favorite employee over there, I wasn’t surprised to hear it looking like it’s gonna be a bad year in the re-model and construction industry in our area. Well, can’t you blame people for not wanting to make any sort of changes, when seeing all this political nonsense going on every day of the week. There’s nothing more crippling than fear combined with uncertainty.
While in conversation today with a colleague, we had a long-overdue chat regarding the direction in which our City is moving, and certainly wasn’t surprised that we’ve been sharing the same feelings regarding the over-building of ticky-tacky apartment houses which we do not need, the continuous decay of the mall, the scary thought of there now being eight storefronts in the plaza of our mall currently for sale, a hotel project that just won’t die and natural death, and the list went on and on.
Not to my surprise, my colleague hadn’t heard a thing about that three-storied apartment house they want to build out near Newman High School, which we also believe isn’t needed, but according someone in our City who’s supposed to be ‘in the know’, believes it’s a perfect fit. Keep in mind nearly every one of those who’re in upper management positions in our City, are non-natives, which in my mind, speaks volumes.
Since people easily forget about past happenings until they’re reminded, we have to remember those ‘players’ in that hotel flop, have nearly all flown the coop including Brent Trout, Robin Anderson, David Rachie, and Dan Latham. Of course there’s one still remaining who’s been in a chronic state of denial over just about everything’s that gone sideways in our community. I just today noticed where our ‘City’ deeded that ‘special project’ property they’ve owned for over nine years and threw a shite-load of money into, just recently deeded it to another one of our entities called ‘North Iowa Corridor Housing Development Corporation’., which has an office in our Chamber of Commerce building, so we’ll see what’s gonna happen with 430 – 1st St. NE. I can’t even begin to think about how much of our taxpayers dollars went to waste on that structure, and only because a certain individual in our City Government thought it would be a great idea at the time. For sure, there was absolutely no critical forwarding thinking when making that decision.
I couldn’t help bringing up a conversation I had several days ago with a highly intelligent resident of our community who was insisting our City Government now has the mentality of being parasitic with our citizens to where we the taxpayers are their ‘hosts’, and we have to set back and stay quiet while they freely feed on us. After thinking about what he said, I couldn’t have agreed more. Some day I’ll have to share names of property owners and their addresses of the homes our City took from them and then later sold to our rental barons for a song. Now if that isn’t what one would call flagrant misuse of power, I don’t know what is. My heart goes out to all those who’ve been taken advantage of by our City, along with putting it out there that karma gives back double the pain they purposely inflicted. Personally, I wouldn’t be able to sleep nights if I were responsible for such actions. But, when souls have turned black, what else does one expect. I’m now wondering what a given person’s community of faith would think if they knew what took place under the direction of one of their not-so pious brethren. I’d love to be a mouse in a corner.
Tonight’s One-liner is: Live truth instead of professing it.