Richmond Development Another 'Olympic Village?'

The City of Richmond, one of my all-time favorite places for watching pea-brained politicians and their ego-centric managers fall all over their Velcro-tied loafers, has done it again.

Turns out one of their biggest projects ever may have to be scrapped.

The Sun Tech City project was one of those Gordon Campbell-inspired P3's - public private partnership. Give a developer a ton of goodies and watch him build you a Skytrain station, a small park, a couple of kiddy swings and a fountain. That's the general fantasy.

'Course, life doesn't always play into your hand.

Take that HUGE economic recession/depression. diporama now.

Read the whole gruesome story here, and then contemplate just what level of scepticism you should hold in reserve the next time you hear some gasbag going on about P3's.

These public-private partnerships might even work on occasion if the rubes who are in public office and who have never run so much as a Bingo game weren't creaming their jeans with the excitement of playing with the Big Boys.

The suits in the towers must be bending over in hysterics every time the phone rings from one of these municipal offices with yet another grand scheme to build a highway or a subway line or a bunch of hospitals.

And, by the way, you'll never guess who gets left holding various bags of debt...