Ignore the other problems and enjoy these two blocks!

San Luis Obispo

If the elitist, let-’em-eat-cake SLO City Council owned a house with a rotting foundation, it would gold-plate the bathtub and install crystal doorknobs.

This council, which spent $102.5K so it could charge more (and add a seventh day) for parking downtown, decided Nov. 15 that it could afford a cool million (the official outlay will be $761.5K; tens of thousands more has already been spent on design and endless revisions) to spiff up two blocks—that’s right, two blocks!—of downtown Higuera (“SLO City Council spends big on two blocks of downtown,” Nov. 17).

Of course, this idea was pushed by “Third-of-a-million-a-year” City Manager Katie Lichtig, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Downtown Association, whose director, Deborah Cash, informed the council that, while the Downtown Association hoped to fund the lights that would grace the ends of the conduit the city would sink into the concrete, the Downtown Association couldn’t guarantee it. Why have business pay when the taxpayer has yet another pocket to pick?

The bloated, administrator-heavy Public Works Department somehow doesn’t know how to do this work, so the profit charged by a private contractor had to be factored into the cost.

Hey, the streets might be falling apart, the traffic signals antiquated, and city workers taking pay cuts, but, once you dodge the potholes, navigate untimed traffic signals, and pay extra for parking, rest assured: You’ll be walking on some mighty nice sidewalks.