To Louis Benjamin: drop the Martin Luther King thing. Everyone is just Kinged out in this town. We have a national holiday; it is celebrated widely with parades, speeches and other types of tributes. The schools participate like it is the notation of the Second Coming and the media spends several days touting its coming, its doings, and its going. Drop it! This street is a bridge too far and the more you whine and cajole, the more people are going to dig in their heels.
To the rest of the council: You need to think about your constituents and their quality of life. Nine cents on the dollar is an outrageous sales tax. People are rightly skeptical that they will never see these promised improvements. The old saying of "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me" applies here. This tax will, I predict, go down in flames. Perhaps you might not want to go with it.
Also, what makes you think that the majority of the people in this town, driving on our poor roads that cannot ever seem to be fixed, want cameras over their shoulders? Yes, people who run red lights should be ticketed and fined heavily, but these electronic spies come across as the "brave new world" that we here in this lovely place thought we would never see.So back to the drawing board, gentlemen - I hope I am not using that term loosely. Think about your constituents who - like those cameras - are watching you, and unlike those cameras, can vote and will.