If you want an education about how real Free Markets are attacked and how Socialism in this nation took root, read Wayne Jett’s Fruits of Graft.

EDITOR NOTE–It should be cleaned up and moved at expense of the owners and Boise taxpayers shouldn’t have to own it. You are correct about potential clean up site.

This is also the area of the middle of the night door ringer.

What is happening at the neighbors? Why does it continue to happen? On. The. Bench.

Reasonable people would also agree that there is a definition of blight and that few areas of Boise continue to show blight. It is a ruse to create these factual disputes and then make the pubic swallow.

How about this. The city with all of the resources that the taxpayers provide could sit down and listen to the people who live and work on the bench, and let us explain to them what type of problems we have. Problems that are self-evident, and problems that are dynamic. Self-evident: lack of sidewalks, trash in yards, broken down vehicles, trailers, and yards that need cleaned up. Also fresh vegetation, and shade, removal of illegal lean to’s, shanty’s and encroachments into setbacks. Dynamic: speeding vehicles, badly marked roads, personalities that do not care or that have given up trying to help the neighborhoods look better, smell better, and be safer. Police for the theives and vandals, and that they show a presence. Dispersing the sex offenders to other areas of town, too. Maintained alleys. These are the view of this writer. Please offer bench experience if you will.

And then what if, a pretty big what if, the city would say, “Ok, we see it and we see the effects. We are no longer going too agree to ignore it.
These are the things we are going to address.” And then quit with the phony baloney of kindness and livability, and make some simple action plans, based on the input received, to solve problems. And then the humbleness to admit that they have left so many things undone and been so complacent that they were a catalyst in the creation of these problems.

But they are like defiant children. The more you ask them not to do something, the tighter they cling to each other and want to do it. What if they tried to gain favor with those on the bench instead of among their clique of sheep that go along to get along, and get recognition of popularity from their clique.

Well that would be my essay on the failure to recognize what creates community.

To the point of earlier — the URD bill that passed is not the answer. The legislature should have put a stop to URDs all together. To pass a bill that simply modifies the money use, is to ‘effectively agree’ with the concept- even though barely a few of the supporters of that bill would agree with URDs in general.

Vista and The Bench is in whatever ‘decreased’ condition due to the city using too much tax base in downtown while ignoring the rest of the city.
Downtown has replaced perfectly good sidewalks with fresh bricks, while routes to schools in the Vista area have NO sidewalks.

The money has been misused in downtown at the expense of other areas.
The ULI report should’ve been title “URDs have Failed the Rest of the City” (and maybe even downtown too, given the overcrowdedness and animosity of some toward DT).