Taking the City Bus to Work

This week my car had some problems and I will have to wait until Monday to get it fixed. I am taking the city bus to and from work. You see the same people on the city bus every morning and every evening. For the most part it is college students, handicapped people, the working poor and criminals. Every once in a while you will also see a homeless person. People talk on the city bus and you get to hear all about their crimes and when they are due back in court. If you take the late bus you get to see all of the people who have been drinking and are coming home from the bars. I taught a late evening class one day this week.

Growing up back East I got to take mass transit all of the time and along with all of the above individuals you also saw the working middle class because they did not have the parking in the city that our city has at present. Back East the cities are more built up rather than out so parking is more of an issue. Urban sprawl is more common for cities out west where we have the room to build out. When I first moved here we did not even have a bus system that you could use to get back and forth to work on everyday of the week. We have Mayor Marty Chavez to thank for the common sense approach he has taken when it comes to mass transit in this city.

One does have to wonder just how our New Mayor Berry will handle the growth in this city. Will he look at this issue and continue to grow public transit or will he be unfriendly to both local businesses and the environment by cutting mass transit in the near future in order to use that money for other activities such as enforcing his attacks on illegal aliens and even more uncontrolled urban sprawl to the west of our city. Water issues will become a major issue in the next few years and one wonders if our new mayor will even admit that there is and will continue to be a problem with uncontrolled unplanned sprawl.

Latest evening I attended the Democratic Party of Bernalillo County monthly meeting and one of the things brought up by an independent voter was that the new mayor may just be paying off political debits to the Republican Party by appointing Darren White as the person in charge of police and fire in this city. I have heard from some of his own and his neighbors that he might just not be as nice of a person as anyone would think. Time will tell just how much he is willing to harm our fair city and its public transits system along with its illegal alien population.

By the way a special thanks to a dear friend that gave me a ride to the meeting last evening. And one last comment please get out and start signing petitions for our candidates. Someone said it reminded them of yearbook signing at this point in the election process so go sign a few blue yearbooks.