Stephen Costello made his name in city politics as an engineer and a driving force behind the new drainage fee.
Now comes Costello the social engineer.
He wants Houston’s city government to lure supermarkets to neighborhoods with few places to buy produce. He is talking about tax breaks, sales tax rebates, utility subsidies, even using public dollars to buy the land for a private business.
We wish our Tea Party friends would direct as much of their ire towards nonsense like this as the mostly staged recent political theater regarding the debt ceiling increase. That would be fun for Houston’s busybody class to experience.
Later in this story, we even learn that the City’s “sustainability director” (!?) is planning a “supermarket summit” this fall, to continue to try to push grocers into “markets” that they’ve apparently deemed unprofitable.
The phrase “Fiddling while Rome burns” comes to mind.
