1. So the Motor Vehicle Division makes Tucsonans drive to one of three places for smog checks: the eastside (22nd/Sarnoff), the extreme northwest side (Prince and Interstate 10) or the southwest side (Valencia/Midvale Park). Wouldn’t it make a hell of a lot of sense—and cut down on some serious vehicle emissions—to put a testing station in the *CENTRAL* part of town?
2. I noticed a sign at Benson Highway and Valencia Road touting the fact that the Regional Transportation Authority and our tax dollars are responsible for the new traffic signal at that intersection. Great! But how much of our tax money was spent for that idiot sign?
This article appears in Feb 15-21, 2007.
Prince and I/10 is fairly central. It’s certainly not “extreme northwest side”.
The exact address is 3931 N. Business Center Drive, and on the registration paperwork, it’s listed as “Northwest of Prince and I-10.” I concede “extreme” may be a bit overboard, but it’s certainly not “fairly central.” At least not on this planet.
I wonder if there’s limitations on where they can place them.
Nobody wants a crematorium in their neighborhood; would they want an emissions testing center?
I think the testing stations are operated by private contractors; DMV probably has no direct control over placement of the stations, although maybe if it asked nicely …
Well, they spent (or budgeted) $450,000 for that intersection; my guess is that the sign was a very small part of it. You could ask them, I suppose, how much money was involved per sign.
But it seems to me that the signs are part of the public accountability of the project and a relatively small price to pay for the public to know how exactly our tax dollars are being spent. I’d rather see such signs and know where the money was going, than to not have the signs and the average person has no idea how public funds are spent.