Pipe Dreams

There were a couple of articles in our local paper recently that made me shake my head in dismay.
Imagine you are a 50 year-old, ex-GI, living a normal life as a businessman and member of your community's planning commission, when you get a letter in the mail from Uncle Sam asking if you'd be interested in being reactivated? That's what happened to a member of our city's planning commission. To my utter amazement, his answer was, "Yes!" According to the article, he's now preparing to go to Fort Bliss for basic training before being sent to Iraq. Believe it or not! Maybe we're better off NOT having someone like that on our planning commission.
The second article concerned our little airport that is located in the middle of town. Half the community wants the airport closed and the property turned into an industrial site. The other half (maybe it's considerably less than half but they seem to have more than half the wealth) wants the airport expanded. For the last year and a half, the city council has been debating the issue. Their ultimate decision to keep the airport open was based largely on an "offer" from the FAA to pour $16 million, over 6 years, into airport improvement and expansion projects. Now that the decision has been made however, it appears the "offer" was indeed too good to be true. In fact, the FAA now says the MAXIMUM our city can receive is $150,000 per year. So, let's see, 16 mil divided by 6 equals about $2.5 mil per year expected versus $150K realized. Hmmm. That's only about $2.35 million per year less than expected! At this rate it will take about a hundred years to make the improvements they were counting on.