Have you noticed how vehicle traffic has reached almost suffocating volumes in these parts? We just won’t learn. People have been drawn here just like the casino boom of the late 1970s when gambling employees camped on the banks of the mucky Truckee because housing was tighter than Ebenezer Scrooge at Christmastime.
This week came the troubling but not surprising news of increased numbers of homeless children.
Nevada’s inferiority complex is alive and well. Self-loathing breeds self-righteousness which is the root cause of Silver State over-the-hill syndrome. Our civic leaders always swoon for suede-shoe salesmen sporting expensive suits swooping in from out of town and promising to cure whatever ails us.
The likes of Tesla, Union Pacific, the Reno Aceholes and Oakland Raiders thus score mega-millions in corporate welfare while the great unwashed get stuck with tax hikes to pick up the slack. Like the casino and mining industries, corporations continue to avoid paying their fair share for the growth they stimulate. Net result: the 2017 state budget has a projected $400 million shortfall.
The Washoe County School District will soon be flush with construction cash thanks to increased sales taxes but bureaucratic tunnel vision rules. Superintendent Traci Davis told me that Damonte Ranch High School will be expanded first but the school’s lead-laced, carcinogenic crumb-rubber artificial turf will stay. What’s a little brain damage as long as graduation rate projections remain rosy?
Sparks’ Golden Eagle Park is covered with the crumbed-up used tires, as are the athletic fields of UNR, Manogue, McQueen, Carson and Douglas high schools. There’s even a small patch at the Jan Evans juvenile facility. (Barbwire 11-24-2015 and thereafter)
When new Wolf Pack football coach Jay Norvell gets here, his students will play on cancer. In nationally televised proof of how much the NFL cares for its players, I was sickened to see crumb rubber dumped onto a snow-covered NFL field last Sunday.
Betcha that the dons of the jockocracy didn’t inform Norvell although he’s probably worked on the stuff. I know that local high school coaches are aware of the dangers to their athletes but fear speaking out. The stuff is so toxic it’s illegal to dump at a landfill. Superintendent Davis pled ignorance.
But hey, we now live in the day of Trump where there are no facts, just interpretations.
BLAST FROM THE PAST. This Thursday at 4:00 p.m., the City of Reno will dedicate the $745,000 renovation of Pat Baker Park in northeast Reno at Montello and Fife streets.
Pat Baker Shannon, now a Montana resident, led the “instant park” construction in 1968 as a reaction to the murder of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It brought national recognition to then-apartheid Reno. Shannon returned for the park’s 40th anniversary in 2008. No word as yet from her local family about Thursday.
Happy High Holly Days.
Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno.
Andrew Barbano is a 48-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com. E-mail <barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us> Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988.
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