if you were concerned that last week's post defending the mayor's decision to buy camry hybrids was a harbinger of change, you needn't have worried. ballard and the gang are right back to making the same old bad decisions.

Police shifted four anti-crime cameras from rough neighborhoods to the Monon Trail in response to muggings there, despite promising the devices wouldn't be taken from higher-crime areas.

Just last week, a man was killed and two others were wounded in a barrage of gunfire near one of the intersections -- at 46th Street and Arlington Avenue -- where one of the cameras had been removed.

there were a few muggings on the monon this year, so i understand installing cameras there. but the administration promised back in october that it wouldn't remove cameras from higher-crime neighborhoods in order to move them to the trail.

how does the administration respond to complaints that it broke yet another promise? with linguistics:

"We have to make choices," [Public Safety Director Scott Newman] said. "This is not a high-crime neighborhood. It's a neighborhood with challenges."

oh, well in that case, carry on! the neighborhood will just have to work a bit harder to overcome its challenges—challenges like barrages of gunfire. no biggie.

another day, another broken promise from the ballard administration. the main difference this time is that this wasn't a campaign promise foolishly made by a candidate who didn't know any better—this promise was made just two months ago. ¶

The state took over the pension debt, we get no new police, but only half the county option tax increase comes back--that's the increase which was so outrageous just an election cycle ago--and of course there's been no sighting of the $70 million worth of fluff in the budget, or even any savings in the mayor's office itself. We've got $30,000 to send Gomer, Mrs. Gomer, and his band of merry junketeers to Asia (he brought back a potential five jobs. I'd as soon he'd just stayed there and reduced the infrastructure strain by two). We charge the IHSAA $100 grand more to play in the Football Barn than we did for the Hoosier Dome, but we couldn't find $120,000 for four cameras for the Monon.

And, y'know, I understand about the Monon, because for one thing an assault there is going to get a lot more "news" play than just another shooting in the 'hood. But it's funny, I also seem to remember local news hyperventilating about the murder rate last year, right up to the election; you have to go online now if you want to learn it's no better this year, and might possibly turn out to be the all-time worst. I really don't think having the Public Safety Director moonlight as the Assistant Budget Cutter is working out all that well. ¶