At Tuesday's Council meeting, our pro-business Council will likely vote to expend tens of thousands of scarce general fund dollars to shut down part of a downtown street to enlarge a “large traffic island” into an expanded park. 

This waste of taxpayer money, strongly supported by downtown's Councilmember Sam Liccardo, will eliminate 23 parking spaces on South First Street, negatively impacting all of the businesses in the area--causing a loss of jobs and forcing customers to hunt for scarce parking.   

In all, the plan is to authorize the City Manager to spend nearly $100,000 at a time when even Mayor Reed’s allies are scrambling to find more money to restore police services:

Now Vice Mayor Madison Nguyen, who is fed up with the [homeless] encampments near her Communications Hill home, is proposing to find a way to restore the funding cut from the police department's budget earlier this year to reinstate patrols near camps in hopes of stopping drug use, burglaries, prostitution and  even violent crimes.

"So residents can feel a little bit safer," Nguyen said. "They are concerned that illegal activities are going on."

While park expansion projects might be good ideas in lush financial times, perhaps when the economic downturn and the Mayor’s policies are imploding public safety services, now is not the right moment to be turning “large traffic islands” into expanded parks.