Keith’s Ramblings

Well I played hockey last night we won 5-1, our goalie couldn’t play last night so we had a replacement Greg Welsh. He was on my team when I played for Ale House, and played a pretty good game. I got my first goal of the season last night, which made me pretty happy. Being a stay at home defenseman for the most part it was nice to finally get a goal. It was just a shot from the point, but it was a pretty good one if I do say so myself. We have about six games left in this season before the playoffs. We are in third place and beat the fourth place team last night so that should help us for the playoff run. We have beat the two teams ahead of us at least once and if we have a full roster should be in pretty good shape for the playoffs.

I just read this article and yet again realize more and more that the government is running this country like a private corporation. The way I understand this it pretty much means that as long as the city government pays me what my house is worth and they are going to put something there that will help the city it is fine? So let’s say I have lived in my house for two years, and I really love my house, I have made it our home, and everything is just the way I want it. In this example because I live on the river and they think it would be nice to build a hotel, etc that they can pay me and take my home. Here are my concerns with this, house prices continue to grow, what if two years ago I was able to buy a 2000 sq ft house for 100k now the same house will sell for 190k? Is the city going to pay me 190k for the house so they can build the hotel? After I pay off my current house I will still be paying higher taxes, interest rates on my loan, what if my credit isn’t as good? I will also have moving expenses, storage expenses, things that weren’t planned on. In my case, I will have to find a new house in the same city because of my wife’s job. I just can’t beleive that the government will allow this to happen.

What they have pretty much ruled in this case is that as long as you make the community better you can do whatever you want to do. At least this ruling will help with the Mary K mansions. The federal goverment just ruled and I quote “”The city has carefully formulated an economic development that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including — but by no means limited to — new jobs and increased tax revenue,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority. Well Mary K has done research as well, and she knows that putting 32 million dollar condo’s will increase the cities tax base, it will probably create new jobs in the form of grounds keepers, maids and office staff to run the place. However she isn’t the government so I am sure that she can’t just use eminent domain and buldoze things. Wait she owns the property though, so shouldn’t she be able to? Sorry for the side tangent.

The supreme court has decided that you really don’t own anything, the American dream that people work on building for years can be taken down by the same people that we pay taxes to if they feel it will help the community. Who is going to help the home owner with all the new expenses that just came up for them when some private company decides to ask the city for these houses? Don’t you just love the government?

After talking to my wife and recieving one comment on this past post, I have come to the conclusion that I may have let my dismay about the mansion projects cloud my judgement in the Federal court house project. Since I think that Mary K has the right to do what she would like with the property that she owns, I have been a little jumpy about the lack of interest in change in this town. However Gregg makes a good point in his comments that although these properties are subisidized the government the are not owned by the government. This was a point that I neglected to research, thank you both for pointing it out to me.

My wife also was kind enough to point out the good that would come from the government building expanding further into the city. This could bring more opportunity for shops, and restaurants to other places. Also with the addition of the new hotels near the farm show business will pick up in that area. It would cut down on my long commute through the city to work as well if the federal court house was moved out of the city. That five minutes is tough for me at times.

As for the comment about my not believing that the government should help poor people pay rent. Well that is a tough question, I don’t see anything wrong with the government helping people pay rent, but I do feel it should be regulated somewhat. I know people that have lived in the same subsidized housing for 30 years, they have two and three generations in the same household. I believe that if we trained these people to get jobs, and get on their feet that we could help others. There are still enough people out there who would love the break to have a place to call home, to get back on thier feet. Places like the Bethesda Mission help some but can’t help all the people.

My plan would be something along the lines of this: For the first five years the government would subisidize as much as they qualify for, each five years after that the situation has to be re-evaluated to see if you can move up, if not why aren’t you what are the stuggles that aren’t allowing you to get work, and provide more? In the cases of three generations in the same home, what are the parents of the children doing? The subsidy system is great if it isn’t abused, the problem is that it is being abused so much, that new people can’t get into the system because of the abuse currently going on.

If you don’t believe abuse is happening stop over to my house and I will show you some examples. There is no simple way to stop the abuse, in order to do that we would have to hire more employees for a part of government that already controls a majority of our state budgets.

I don’t know the answer, but thanks to Greg and Kathy, I have learned that moving people out of subsidized housing is not the easy answer that I thought it would be.

More things to fight for in the city of Harrisburg, lets see what we are going to save next. Cumberland Courts apartments are privately owned, but subsized by the federal government, construction isn’t going to start until 2008, stop spending federal money on rent in this place and move people out, then the private owner (probably vartan) will sell it cheap since he can’t get any income in. What is the Friends Meeting House? I will research this more.

I hate option one, no need to get rid of bars restaurants and historic homes when an apartment building will do. Sixth and basin street I don’t know where that is and that would be a tough one since it seems that the elderly people that live there are not getting subsidized I don’t think it is fair to kick them out.

Reeds options:

During a series of meetings over the past year with U.S. District Judge Yvette Kane and other federal officials, Reed favored building the courthouse along what would be South Third Street Extended as the anchor of the planned South Gateway Project. There is a parking lot at the site now.

Reed’s other favored sites were on vacant parcels along North Sixth or North Seventh streets above Reilly Street to Maclay, which is the city’s North Gateway Project.

Reeds options seem to be on the outskirts of the city, this doesn’t make much sense to me, the more people that are downtown during the day the more the businesses thrive for lunches and shopping. If you push them out past Reily and Maclay first of all you are pretty close to home, my home, but second of all a typical person coming in for court, or a court worker doesn’t have many options to eat within the city. If you are at Maclay they would have Da Pitts, and camp Curtain (perhaps) Burger King on Maclay and Cameron, going out front (out of city) If you keep them close to the market, that would help local growers, and workers. Sometimes things just don’t make sense to me.