An "Incredible Squandering" of Tax Dollars?

On the agenda for Cincinnati City Council's neighborhoods committee Wednesday: a letter from Jeffrey Bakst, an attorney in Mount Auburn who writes about what he calls "a complete lack of management in our city and the incredible squandering of valuable dollars..."

Here's what he says happened in "this very upsetting event," according to a September letter to council members:

In the last year, the city tore up the sidewalks from Kinsey Avenue down past Reading Road. The replacement sidewalks were beautiful.

But on Sept. 18, he drove to his office at Auburn and Kinsey avenues and found city workers tearing up the new sidewalks that had been put in seven months before.

Apparently the tearing-up was for a new gas line, "which is certainly a good thing for our community. However, it is quite obvious there was no planning done whatsoever, no attempt to cooperate with utility companies or visa versa....it has caused me great aggravation and damage to my property and wasted thousands of dollars. Regardless, you better start to take heed of what you are doing in the city or we are sure to go down the tubes. This was nothing short of gross mismanagement and it has cost the tax payers many thousands of dollars. Isn't it time that this kind of waste stops."