Fudd’s folly on Grow Avenue

Published 6:00 am Wednesday, November 1, 2006

Vaudeville star and impresario extraordinaire Elmer Fudd strolls through Central Park, past a ragged collection of down-and-out actors hungry for a break.

One by one, Jack Benny, Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor and Bing Crosby put on their best shtick hoping to catch the impresario’s eye – “You must’ve been a beautiful baaay-bee,” a long-faced Crosby croons – but Fudd pooh-poohs them all…until he spies a familiar long-eared character, sprawled shabbily across the next park bench.

“Bugs Bunny!” Fudd exclaims. “Why are you hanging around with these guys? They’ll never amount to anything!”

The cartoon’s punchline, of course, comes at the expense of both characters – the rabbit will end up not at center stage but in the faceless chorus line, while the hapless scout has bumbled his way past the real talent.

Fudd’s folly came to mind last week as the City Council turned up its collective nose at a federal grant of nearly a half-million dollars for pedestrian improvements on Grow Avenue.

The move came at the urging of neighbors and some non-motorized advocates; with the cameras rolling, councilors were in full rhetorical plumage, with one intoning, “We’re not going to destroy your neighborhood for $450,000.”

You could feel the air woosh out of the Public Works Department, as Randy Witt and engineer Bob Earl glumly defended a project that until recently looked like it would meet community wants.

The proposal would have put a meandering sidewalk on the east side of Grow, among other improvements. Neighbors countered that the plan didn’t go far enough to calm traffic and fix parking problems (issues actually beyond the scope of the original project), and that too much roadside vegetation would be lost.

That traffic and parking changes could be tacked on later, when the city had more money, mattered little. “Why are you hanging onto the these plans?” Fudd would exclaim, if he lived on Grow Avenue. “They’ll never amount to anything!”

Seeing the project get the cartoon hook from side stage was odd, given that Grow residents have been clamoring for attention for at least six years. Back in 2000, neighbors spent their mornings with a radar gun monitoring speeds of passing vehicles. When the city’s Non-Motorized Advisory Committee was formed in January 2004, the selection of Grow as its debut project was met with fanfare.

And now? Back to square one.

Even if Public Works can cajole its way to another federal grant for Grow, the money won’t be available before 2010. Without outside funding, island taxpayers will have to pony up an extra half-million to pay for whatever neighbors finally decide is acceptable, and project costs will balloon with inflation in the meantime. And how much time and expense should the city devote to repeating this folly, anyway? If two years and $115,000 worth of public process didn’t yield a plan satisfactory to the neighborhood, why should anyone believe the next effort will fare better?

Sometimes something is better than nothing, even if that something isn’t perfect. These public-process merry-go-rounds – when even the narrowest opposition spells doom for a project from which many would benefit – portend failure for improvements in other neighborhoods, not to mention the proposed Ericksen-Hildebrand opening. It makes the days when a council could build a roundabout in the face of public criticism seem quaint.

What must we look like viewed from beyond the shores of our solipsistic little island, when unable to command exactly what we want, we demand to go wanting instead? When our council pleads poverty one minute, then turns down a half-million dollars in free money the next?

Think Elmer and Bugs: looney tunes.