Guess those recent Regional Economic Council hearings, where standing room only crowds yawned at the "eds and meds" will save us mantra and demanded infrastructure improvements and green energy investments, got Rudnick, "Trippy" Tripathi and Ciminelli a little nervous. Looks like the boys felt the need to restore a little UB2020 discipline.
Let's take a little look under the Medical Campus Synergy hood, shall we?
Erie County Population Growth (not)
As a county, we have been been loosing an average of 4861 people a year for the last 40 years. The remaining population (14% of which live below he poverty line) are being told that spending a minimum of $500 for every man, woman a child in the county to build a playpen for Rudnick, et al. is the best, if not only way to save the county. $500 is only the down payment mind you, we'll need to spend to more to move Childrens Hospital, staff all the buildings, heat, cool and maintain them.
The real lie, that this is growth that creates jobs, is there in the article too. We're going to shut Children's and move it to another place in the City, cut $100 million out of SUNY Buffalo South Campus investment and spend it downtown instead, shut Milliard Filmore Hospital and move that somewhere else too. Hollowing out one area of the City to build in another is not growth, its a money grab designed to funnel public dollars to the already wealthy (who don't want to do anything risky like actually creating jobs in the private sector).
And in the meantime people are fleeing this county by the thousands, hard to see how "The Medical Campus" is going to stop that.
