There’s an uncanny resemblance.
Thanks to a rushed consent agenda vote at Monday night’s council meeting, city tax dollars will now be used to help fund the egregious coterie of snoops known as “The Party Patrol.”
That’s right, a shameful civic campaign to target young people having too much fun has expanded from being a private conceit sponsored by the Fan District Association and one single smarmy, censorious councilperson to an official city campaign that will use Paygo money to enable and support the efforts of neighborhood peeping toms.
***res . No. 2007-R86; (Patron: President Pantele) - To approve an expenditure in the amount of $5,000 from the General Fund Council Districts Operating Budget funds for the Second District to support the off-duty police patrol costs of the Fan District Association’s “Party Patrol” program for the 2006-2007 school year.***
This “Gladys Kravitz Memorial Motion” passed 9-0, with not a single councilperson expressing discomfort over publicly funding a program that blatantly discriminates against young people, offers no legal due course for those who are accused of living in a “party house” and would appear to be run by chemically-imbalanced property owners who can’t spell and have moved next to a vibrant university in spite of having an irrational hatred of college students. Tell me again why Richmond is known far and wide as “The City That Fun Forgot”?
Given these facts, would it surprise anyone to learn that Save Richmond obtained its recent FOIA’d CenterStage cash flow statement from…. ta da!… the offices of city council. Yes, and this damning document would appear to have come direct from the desk of the Chief Party Patrol “Child Catcher” — Councilman Bill Pantele.
In fact, Pantele and his pals have had the Virginia Performing Arts Foundation’s punk cash flow statement in their possession for two months and haven’t had a dang thing to say about it to their constituents. Nada. Zilch. I guess they have different, ah, priorities.
So, let’s recap those priorities: Richmond City Council has no problem overseeing and regulating your next private party, and using city funds to do it, but they have no plans to properly oversee or regulate an impending payout of $23 million in tax dollars to a secretive Foundation made up of well-heeled political contributors; a public-private partnership that won’t reveal what its administrative expenses are…. can’t account for constuction overruns… and has already wasted $8 million dollars in meals tax money.
While we should rightfully applaud council for helping to alleviate the tax burden of Richmond’s elderly on the same evening they passed this asinine motion, one could argue that, with these priorities and with this kind of leadership, only old people will want to live in this place after they are finished with it.