By Emerson Drake
7/16/11
Mayor Ridenour's political handlers, the real estate/developers, have abandon him for greener pastures. After all, Ridenour is yesterdays news. The most poignant example was watching him in the Fourth of July parade being hauled around in the back of a pick-up truck in a old lawn chair being taken out for the last time like a bag of garbage going to the dump.
Now his handlers will let the Bee go after him to take responsibility for the SCAP fiasco. After all what has Mayor Ridenour actually done besides giving millions of dollars to a private company to enhance the wealth of his former friends.
Listening to him whine at a recent city council meeting that people don't come to committee meeting and then get mad when things come up for a vote. He was specifically referring to the council, at his behest, voted to close the bathrooms of city parks forcing hundreds of children to lose the opportunity to use the parks to play in or else the would have to use bushes as bathrooms.
Now, finally an outpouring of emotion from Modesto citizens, outraged over the squandering of money by SCAP and their short sighted decisions to place relatives in "over renovated" homes where the money invested will never be recouped.
After turning a blind eye for seven and a half years to incompetence and waste in Modesto's government the Bee is finally taking off the blinders their advertisers (the aforementioned Real Estate/Developers) had placed on them by withholding their advertising and are starting to point fingers.
But shouldn't those fingers be pointed right back at the Bee and their Editors? They've provided media cover for every hack politician in the county. But now, now millions of dollar later, they have to blame someone and it looks like it's going to be Mayor Ridenour. Don't misunderstand, he deserves the disdain, but its been way to long in coming.
We've only seen the edge of the coming scandal know as SCAP. Who played bird dog and pointed out the particular properties for SCAP officials to purchase? Which companies have prospered by the "excessive rehab" of these properties? Who was the real estate company and agent who made their 6% every time one of these properties was sold? Who provided the inspections and appraisals?
How many of the answers to these questions will lead right back to the same people who financed the Mayor and Council's elections ?
If we only had a bigger truck to back up to 1010 10th Street to haul them all away in.
