Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Chicago Olympics thought

Carrie linked to this a bit ago. It's a piece in the Chicago Reader by Ben Joravsky -- "An Open Letter to the IOC: Why you don't want to give Chicago the Olympics."

He makes the argument that they just might not be able to do it financially. And he says that while the public opposition is not that visible currently, that really could change when people realize "oh shit, our schools and infrastructure are crumbling, and you want us to spend our tax money this year on what?"

And apart from the money, there's the question of whether they could actually pull it off physically. Sure, it's not Chicago city agencies that would be running the show. But they'd be part of it. And I don't mean to sound anti-government, because I'm not, but I just don't know that they could pull it off. I was talking to a friend who used to work for a Chicago agency and his stories of bureaucracy lived up to all the cliches. Do the Olympics people really want to have the fun of trying to work with that?

1 Comments:

At 2:37 PM, Blogger Bad Decision Maker said...

Since then, it's become clear that city taxpayers aren't just on the line for $500 million, but that Daley's saying we'll cover all cost overruns (probably billions of dollars if all the olympics from the last 2 decades are any indication).
http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/wanna-buy-an-olympics/Content?oid=1165828
http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/on-the-hook/Content?oid=1141465


There also have been MASSIVE state budget cuts... already overflowing hospitals being dumped with more patients b/c other facilities are closing, schools laying off hundreds of teachers...

 

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