Weird meeting with CTA President Ron Huberman last night to discuss the ongoing renovation of the Howard Street
CTA Station. The meeting was in gymnasium at
Gale Elementary School in Rogers Park.
Huberman were here to placate the little folks (us) by pretending to care about how we care about our own neighborhood.
Huberman spent about five minutes telling us that he was once a beat cop in the hood. Dunno if that was to establish a bond with us, to threaten us
subtly by pointing out that he's good with a gun, or what.
Alderman Moore (49th Ward) was there and said a whole lot of nothing, as usual. Look, let's be honest. Moore doesn't give a crap about this or you or me, really, and
Huberman already has his mind made up to grab 4.7 million bucks from the Howard Street
TIF.
One of the attendees asked Huberman, in an eloquent mini-speech, why he doesn't keep his mitts off the local
TIF dough and dip into the tens of millions of dollars being pissed away to mothball
CTA's Magnificent Failure at Block 37 in the Loop. No answer from
Huberman to that, of course.
I won't bore you with fine details - it doesn't matter because this is another done deal put before us to try to make us think we're involved. We ain't, folks, and lemme tell ya,
Ron Huberman could sell shit to a maggot. Joe Moore, for instance, seems to have bought all the shit that
Huberman has placed before him. Joe
oughta watch Ron. Ron pretends he's interested in what people are saying, like Joe tries to do, but
Huberman is more convincing.
Daley's Golden Boy, Huberman is able to send out these weird
hypno rays from his eyes to try to
stupify us (see photo). You could see them if you looked close enough, but the ray seem to work only on stupid people. The room was filled with about 45 people, most of whom seemed to be too smart for Ron's eye rays.
Huberman tried to frighten us by threatening to stop work on the half-finished Howard Station renovation. BS about the escalators needing to be completely enclosed, for example, even though the escalators at Loyola Station have been open to rain and snow exposure for years with no real problem.
Huberman lied. He cajoled. He pouted. He made Jim
Ginderske uncomfortable, for Jim found himself in the uncomfortable position of not being the prettiest boy in the room.
Unfortunately, as I said, the
TIF money for this over-budgeted, beyond projected completion, a done deal.
This was all for show. Bottom line:
CTA will rape and pillage as needed, they will threaten some miniature local version of a Doomsday scenario if we stand in their way, and ultimately, we will not be able to resist.
Resistance is futile, folks.