It’s fantastic news for taxpayers and for fiscal sanity in the Grand Rapids area. Last night the expensive and redundant Rapid “Silver Line” tax increase request went down in flames. The overall vote total was 52% against and 48% in favor, but when looking at the six cities in the Rapid service district, we...
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Grand Rapids Pundit has received one of the pro-Silver Line post cards in the mail, as I’m sure many residents of the ITP service district have (Grand Rapids, East Grand Rapids, Walker, Wyoming, Kentwood, and Grandville). This post card, which you can view here, exemplifies the continued contempt that the ITP/Rapid has for the...
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This weekend’s Grand Rapids Press had an article about the ballooning cost of a potential “light rail” system that is in the works for Grand Rapids. The project hasn’t actually even begun, but already the potential cost has jumped from $69 million to $79 million – in the span of one year. The Rapid is...
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Mayor George Heartwell starts his State of the City 2006 Speech by summarizing past state of the city speeches and reviewing accomplishments pertaining thereto. First, he starts with cooperation between the city schools and the city government. Nevermind that his 2004 state of the city touted cost savings as a primary goal of collaboration...
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Amongst all the humorous banter about how government can make a city cool (an oxymoron if we’ve every heard one), a pollster released the results of a survey of college students this week. They were asked what makes a city cool. It wasn’t nifty bars or government-funded entertainment district studies, or whoppingly expensive light...
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The era of big government is just beginning… The newly-installed Grand Rapids mayor George Heartwell gave his second state of the city speech last week at the Rotary Club downtown. His message? More government is needed to improve the regional economy. He essentially outlined three initiatives that included more funding for downtown, a bigger...
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