ecision to sink more than a half-million taxpayer dollars into a first-rate football field used primarily by a private religious organization (which happens to be the high school he attended).
We will set aside for the moment the issue of whether funding an institution that produces the likes of Mr. Onorato and Luke Ravenstahl constitutes a prudent public investment, and suggest this experiment:
A number of public schools and community groups -- located, perhaps, in communities on the short end of Mr. Onorato's cynical, regressive, unconstitutional property assessment system, with school districts that can not afford artificial turf or a new press box or luxurious locker rooms -- should submit applications to use the fancy new field for practices (football, lacrosse, soccer) and especially, WPIAL football games. The Onorato administration's response to those applications would provide an empirical foundation enabling taxpayers to conclude whether Mr. Onorato's decision to direct scarce taxpayer dollars toward this project was (1) a reality-based attempt to benefit Allegheny County residents or instead (2) a faith-based effort to provide a free magic carpet ride to North Catholic.
Infytune: Magic Carpet Ride, Steppenwolf
Infytune: High School Confidential, Jerry Lee Lewis
Infytune: Be True To Your School, The Beach Boys
7 comments:
Not forgetting that Dan Rooney and Kevin Colbert (Steelers GM) are also North Catholic alum. And good people, too! So don't be gettin' all nasty n'at, Infy.
Mr. Rooney may be a good person, but he also is a parasite relentlessly feasting on taxpayer dollars with an assist from overmatched, fanboy public officials.
This stinks in every way, Danny should be ashamed. This isn't some $100 slush fund donation or sending free beer or some Steelers tickets which they all do. Good somebody caught his hand in the cookie jar.
Lovely facility and at another time I might not have been perturbed by the expenditure of the money, but we now have a governor who is changing education in PA in a big funding way. If you think his motives are not imbedded in a staunch support of Catholic education you have never been punched between the shoulder blades by Sister Ermalinde.
Agreed in that in this climate of severe austerity and sacrifice, it seems an awful lot like gingerbread.
The P-G made a valid point in its editorial - couldn't County Council have made itself aware earlier? - but it came at the expense of much consideration of the more important issue, whether this project was appropriate in its conception.
As has become numbingly customary, the Post-Gazette editorialists miss the point.
Onorato should know better, and the local leaders of the Catholic Church prove themselves hypocrites and chiselers by using political connections to take the money from taxpayers, many of them disadvantaged, and use it to feather their fancy football field.
Neither Onorato nor the Church was playing on Jesus' team in this shabby game.
10 to 1 a N Catholic or Central grad got the contract for the work too. Those guys look out for their own esp when tax payers are footing the bill. At least this time they got caught. Oh well say a couple of hail marys and the pope will forgive them just like all those mobsters.
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