Your government in action

So for years, law enforcement turned a blind eye to neighborhood video poker machines, and now the state is pumping money to local police agencies to crack down on bars with machines that pay out. Funny, this get-tough approach is happening just as state-licensed casinos are opening across the state.

Tavern owners have a good point -- if county officials didn't think that poker machines were paying out, then why do they charge more to license the machines than they do to license pool tables and video games? (I'm a little mystified as to why video games and pool tables have to be licensed. If there an official reason, or is it just a naked attempt to squeeze more revenue out of business owners? That's a rhetorical question.)

Meanwhile, the state plans to sink $25 million into a soccer stadium in Delaware County. I hope that everyone in Pittsburgh who cheered when the state agreed to ante up for the new Penguins' arena can make it out to Chester for a soccer game. You paid for it; you might as well enjoy it.

What's eight inches among friends?

I decided I'm cool with taxpayers picking up the tab for a new hockey arena after all. After all, what else are we going to spend that money on?

In the little valley town

My former co-worker Mark Houser has a good story in today's Trib about efforts to revive the Mon Valley. One passage in particular caught my attention:

Mayor Betty Esper publicly credited the Waterfront for bringing her town out of distressed status this spring. The booming commercial and residential complex on the former site of U.S. Steel's Homestead Works has added more than $500,000 in tax money to the borough's bottom line, Esper said, an amount that will grow as the development pays off construction loans under a tax-increment financing plan.

But median house prices in Homestead fell nearly 8 percent in the past four years, according to RealSTATS, a Pittsburgh real estate analysis firm.

Attempts to lure traffic to Homestead's Eighth Avenue strip have failed so far. Sonja Sailor and her husband, who live in a restored Victorian house up the hill in Munhall, opened the Alexander Graham Bell Cafe on the strip in 2003 and closed it shortly after. The vegetarian restaurant that moved in after them also folded.

"We thought when we came in that there would be a lot of people who would do something similar to what we did, and that didn't happen. I think that Eighth Avenue just isn't ready yet," Sailor said.

Of course the Waterfront hasn't done squat for Eighth Avenue. It was never meant to. Oh, maybe local officials hoped it would. But the developers clearly wanted it to be cut off from Homestead's business district. Why else would there be only one access point from Eighth Avenue, which is poorly marked and confusing to navigate? I understand that the developers had to have their arms twisted to provide that entrance. It seems to me the Waterfront was designed merely to lure shoppers from the city and other suburbs, and keep them at a safe distrance from the scary people in Homestead.

For an interesting discussion on Mon-Valley development--or lack thereof--check out this post at Tube City.

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In other news, a state loan to help the Penguins and the Sports and Exhibition Authority acquire land for the new arena has turned into a grant. At least we don't have any other uses for that money.

Priorities

I was driving home from work yesterday, through the South Side, only to discover that once again McArdle Road is closed. Then today, there's a massive water line break in Oakland, which is, of course, a recurring problem in Pittsburgh.

I added these facts together and came to one inescapable conclusion: This city really needs a new hockey arena.