Especially when they don't know the terminology in their own legislation. Some days I am really happy I don't work in DC anymore.

Listening to this go around between the city and GFEC the last few years it seems the city is more interested in playing games than achieving results.

Today's newspaper story says that GFEC draft workforce report tells the reality about affordable housing issue and that 'displeased' some city council members, but the truth hurts. While the city council puts it's head in the sand on affordable housing is nothing new and that they want to ignore the problem is all the more deplorable.

The GFEC Board sent a letter that they were shocked about the pulling of the contract, but the mayor says he spoke with Cynthia McKinney. Sorry Joe but you are on the board, did you tell the other board members? Are you active on the board? Because if you were then you had to know the GFEC letter was coming, it doesn't seem to track.

As for the Telsa Motors deal first the city keeps GFEC out of negotiation, but then wants to pull the resources to the city when they couldn't win the contract? That is not GFEC's fault and further more it shows a lack of accomplishing the job so now the city council wants to give the city staff greater authority?

As for the Air-Zona land issue GFEC says in the article the contract issue was city fault not theirs, based on past events I am inclined to agree. Let's look back a year ago Fall, the new 4th Street overpass was ahead of schedule and could have been completed before the end of 2005. So why was it finished in mid 2006? Because the city hadn't done due diligence about the land purchases and made sure all the property was in fact bought.

Improvements to air service hasn't been pushed hard enough by the city and frankly the land swap for that land nearly did not happen. How long would it have taken the city to get it done had the deal failed?

Westcor has been working on mall expansion for over 10 years, I remember the issue coming up before I even left for DC in late 1996. It was only when Dilliards revealed if it didn't get expansion it would close their location and as result the whole mall was in danger that the city got serious about making long overdue expansion plans.

Next the Downtown Conference Center in a nutshell was a bad location and wasted over half a million dollars for something that never came about. Now I can appreciate wanting to experiment and float new and different ideas in public policy, a point Anonymous Mike made to me as it came to monkeying around a while back. But anyone who has lived in Flagstaff any length of time knows that in the summer time or on most Fridays that last thing downtown needs is more traffic, the main arteries were simply not made to deal with as much as it gets now. So it was a bad idea from the outset.

Lastly if a city official didn't have the ability to win the Tesla contract and doesn't have the support of the business community as the article indicates why would anyone give him more responsibility?

The city acts slow at best and is usually years behind what the local economy needs, while GFEC may not be perfect it's track record has a far more positive than the city's. Failure is a poor business model to give greater responsibility.

Back at the most recent blogorama Vox I think had the question what candidates light your fire? Granted it is very early in the election cycle, frankly I don't even think they should be campaigning for another year, but that is a seperate issue. At the time none of us could name anyone we could get excited about.

That said the more I hear about Fred Thompson the more I like. I doubt I would agree with him about everything, but I doubt I would with any politician. But things like this make me think he's got the right mindset for our country.

But like I said it is still very early only time will tell.

Coyote Blog, go ahead I'll wait for you.

CATO brings an interesting perspective to an issue. A perspective I won't see in the main stream media, but then that is why I read their site.

PS - Best wishes for recovery to the Edwards' family.