Your oh-so-broke Charlotte City Council members claim that we just don't have the money to widen our way out of congestion. And they couldn't possibly afford to run buses without the transit tax. City council members aren't even interested in fixing the dozen or so worst bottlenecks in the city. In fact, they've even gone so far as to create this map of roads they have no intention of ever widening, which includes just about every major thoroughfare anyone might attempt to use to get to work.
   But they do apparently have plenty of money -- $5.4 million -- for road work big box retailer IKEA wants that will help drive customers to its store by connecting McCullough Drive to City Boulevard. Here's the plan according to the city council agenda. Developer Crescent Resources will build the road, and the city will reimburse them over 10 years as part of a scheme where the city returns revenues from the property taxes IKEA pays to the company to pay for the road. 
   Whether the city pays the money up front or puts a fancy property tax money swap scheme into play doesn't really matter. The cost to the city is the same and IKEA gets a free road while fixes for truly congested areas of the city go unfunded. 
   In this article in today's Charlotte Observer, City Manager Pam Syfert claims that the city is so broke that if the transit tax went down, the city would have to cut police and garbage service or wipe out bus service. Yet every week it seems, the city council blows another $5 million to $10 million on silly economic development projects like this one.
   City bureaucrats are counting on the fact that you don't read their agendas or pay attention to what they spend, that you'll buy their contention that they are broke. So each week, this blog will highlight their wasteful spending until we've counted enough money to pay for the buses should the transit tax go down. 
   At the rate they waste money, it should only take us a couple of months. Stay tuned.