News10 is still beating up City Hall over the waiting-for-Godot Marshall Plan. What a blood feast. It is clear Mayor Ann Johnston never should have said thing one about a Marshall Plan at her State of the City Address. She had nothing.
That said, southside activists like Motecozuma Sanchez don’t necessarily speak for anyone but themselves. Proper coverage of this issue includes getting beyond the handful of ornery regulars who show up to berate the Council. Pounding the pavement for a few blocks along Eighth Street and several similar neighblorhoods would do the trick.
That would succeed in getting the southside’s perspective, at least. But that is just one or two political districts in this city. Leaders have to govern the whole enchilada. My point is the emerging sense that the public is angry at City Hall over the Marshall Plan may derive from too small a sample.
The real outrage occurred before this administration’s watch, when drunken-sailor spending so compromised city finances that the police department could not weather the recession without a scary reduction in cops. The Marshall Plan is just a well-meaning mayor’s attempt to piece together some of the wreckage.
An equally deserving target would be former Mayor Ed Chavez, whose complacent over-spending helped create this mess. But he’s out of range in Indio, playing the links until Happy Hour.

