What's your limit?

Finally, at $880 million dollars the Editorial Board at The Fort Worth Star-Telegram might have reached theirs with the Trinity River.

We can only hope.

This project continues to escalate in costs while scaling back on everything else. The "urban lake" is now half the size, more of a pond. The expensive fancy bridges gone. Nearly $400,000,000 earmarked in stimulus money.

Maybe they should have listened to Clyde Picht in a 2007 Fort Worth Business Press Letter to the Editor.

Trinity Uptown robs taxpayers, rewards private interests

The Army Corps of Engineers made the recommendation; no doubt, because they couldn’t find anyone among the high-cost crowd who knew what they were doing. It’s what they should have done in the first place rather than practicing political payback.

Heading into 2007, the Authority still insists the price of River Vision is $435 million. Compare that dream with the reality that Jerry Jones’ $650 million stadium is now $1 billion; the $90 million Omni Hotel is now $160 million, and the cost of one lane mile of road construction has jumped from $500,000 to $660,000. Those are cost increases that are happening now, with current projects.

There have been no elections for Trinity Uptown and very limited opportunity for citizen input despite the claimed “hundreds of open meetings.” The Corps was late on the environmental impact statement and the plan has been changed to move a holding pond from the River Crest area to Gateway Park. That requires at least an amendment to the EIS.

But ignoring bad management at City Hall and dismissing it as “challenges” is just as irresponsible as the mismanagement.

Let’s say it loud and clear: The Trinity Uptown project is taking money from the taxpayers to subsidize economic development for private interests. That’s not why we have government, and we all know it. It matters to the general public that they can’t drive on decent streets, with curbs and gutters and good lighting.

It also matters that this project displaces or closes around 90 small businesses through eminent domain, just so others can profit. It matters that there are still unknowns in the handling and cost of environmental remediation. It matters that this is a Fort Worth project that is partially funded and managed by the Tarrant Regional Water District, which has wandered way beyond its prime areas of responsibility: providing current and future water supplies and managing some near-empty lakes.

It matters that this project is rife with cronyism, subterfuge, smokescreen and misinformation.

When the private sector returns to funding development and accepting the risks that bring greater rewards – and local government puts the needs of the public first – we’ll have the idyllic city living that we now only think we have.

Since it's Sunday, we'll leave you with this quote from THE book, "For which of you, intending to build a tower, sits not down first, and counts the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?