Eye Poll Slams Schultz for Bad Performance

The Eye recently ran an Eye Poll to see you how the citizens felt about APD’s Chief of Police, Ray Schultz. Although, our poll is unscientific the results show that Schultz received an overwhelming bad rating in his performance. Our Eye Poll asked the following:

How do you rate Chief Ray Schultz given the turmoil in APD?
Rating Voters Percentage
Great 28 12%
Okay 11 4%
No opinion 9 3%
Poor 38 16%
Extremely poor 140 61%
Error margin +/- 4%
226 participants voted

Our poll shows 16% of the participants who voted, rated Schultz’s performance at “okay” to “great.” A total of 3% did not have an opinion. Here is the no shocker to us here at the Eye; a whopping 77% rate Schultz’s performance at “poor” to “extremely poor.” Let us repeat this information; 77% of the participants, who voted, rated Schultz’s performance at “poor” to “extremely poor.”

Is Schultz’s lousy rating due to all the police involved shootings? Is it due to the Schultz’s alleged involvement in the Darren White debacle? Is it that Schultz lied and stated there was “no probable cause” in the Kathy White alleged DUI case? Is it that Schultz was convicted in a United States Federal District Court of civil rights violations? Is it the record millions of dollars paid out under Schultz’s leadership or lack thereof? We could go on and on and on…

This poll probably comes as no shock to Schultz as he scrambled this week looking for a distraction. We found what we believe is that distraction, check back with us tomorrow and read what Schultz “brewed up” to take the heat off of himself again. The Eye has seen his tactics before when he sat back and let his department rip Judge Murdoch into pieces. Yes folks, the same big disaster case the special prosecutor from Santa-Fe County dismissed this week.

Stay tuned folks, tomorrows story will raise eyebrows on both ends of the isle…

And the Answer is; Get rid of Em’!

The Eye On Albuquerque ran a poll. The Eye Poll asked, “Darren White has claimed the City is $66 million in the red. Berry made a promise to eliminate the un-needed Public Safety Director’s position. Do you think Berry should eliminate the Public Safety Director position and all Public Information Officers?” Recently White has recanted and now claims that the red ink is $40 million dollars. Maybe it was just a little “White’ lie” or maybe White misspoke again.

Although, our Eye Poll is unscientific, the results clearly show by a 90% margin that Mayor Berry should eliminate the position of public safety director and all public information officers positions throughout the City. Below are the results:

333 (90%) Yes, I agree

27 (7%) No, I disagree

7 (1%) I have no opinion

A total of 369 people participated in our poll.

Do the citizens of Albuquerque even have a City Council? By the way this city is being run by the fascism style; it does look like we do. Our elected City Council has forgotten that they were elected to represent the citizen and the citizens’ best interest, not just sit back and collect a check.

Unscientific or not, this is the voting public speaking. It may behoove Mayor Berry to heed to this public opinion. What the Eye means by “heed” is eliminate the positions. Do not try and fool the public and transfer them to positions such as “Special Projects Coordinators.”

Eye Poll: Wrong Direction

A couple of weeks ago Marty's Minions were circulating a poll - paid for by them and without the poll questions attached - whose conclusion was that the Almighty Alcalde was unbeatable. We weren't buying it. Let's just say we were suspicious considering the source.

The big question that Marty's folks cited was the wright/wrong question. Generally, this is a good indicator that voters are either contented or at least apathetic, or they're in a mood to throw the bums out. For incumbents the former is great - the latter, not so much.

So... with all of Marty's supposed glowing poll numbers staring us in the Eye, we decided to see if they were really as shiny as they were portrayed. In last week's unscientific poll, Eye readers overwhelmingly rejected the idea that the city is headed in the right direction.

67% of participants indicated that the city is headed in the wrong direction, 28% in the right direction, and 5% didn't know (view it here). We've been very critical of the current holder of the 11th Floor throne, so it wouldn't surprise us if we're a bit oversampled on the detractor side. However, a 39 point difference is significant even in an unscientific poll.

All recent indications are that the city's crime problem is deepening. Today's story on the recent take down of a sophisticated Mexican meth ring here in the Duke City demonstrates our vulnerability (ABQ Journal - Subscription). Do you feel safer today than you did four years ago? That's the question in this week's Eye Poll. Don't forget to vote!

Lack of Trust

It's always been our opinion that the trust of the governed is an absolute necessity if any governing body is to operate efficiently. It may be simply a sign of the times or a sign of something specific to the current city administration, but Eye On Albuquerque readers overwhelmingly distrust the current administration.

In our unscientific poll of 355 readers, a whopping 76% have no trust in the current city administration, 6% trust it some of the time, 11% most of the time, 8% all of the time, and only one person didn't know (read the results here). A healthy skepticism of government is imperative, but when over 3/4 of a governed body have lost trust in those that govern it's an indication of a serious problem - a problem that will take more than the few months between now and the next city election to fix.

This week were casting our gaze on national politics - something we rarely do. Since everyone is all a-twitter about the upcoming caucus by New Mexico's Ds and of course Super Tuesday, we thought we'd get in on the act adding the Rs into the mix just to be fair. Don't forget to vote!

Eye Poll: Limit Him!

Folks this special two week Eye Poll was never even close. In our unscientific poll 76% of Eye readers voted for term limits on current Mayor Martin Chavez; only 21% voted to let our current mayor continue after his second consecutive term (view it here).

We're generally in favor of term limits particularly in the case of administrative offices. By necessity and design, mayoral, gubernatorial, and presidential offices concentrate large amounts of power in the hands of one individual. An entrenched executive is not only difficult to remove, but difficult to catch should they decide to stick their hands in the public cookie jar; which brings us to our current Eye Poll.

Trust is an absolute necessity for government to operate effectively. Once the public trust has been violated it's almost impossible for it to be regained. Recently, the Chavez administration has been caught repeatedly fudging numbers in an apparent effort to make the mayor look good. Whether it's the number of cops on the streets, the number of accidents at scam-era intersections, the number of animals available for adoption, or even city greenhouse gas, the 11th floor has been caught giving out favorable statistics only to have them proven wrong.

We're curious what effect these repeated revelations have had on the public and the trust the public has in the current administration. Let us know what you think, don't forget to vote!

Eye Poll: Not that it Matters

Last week's Eye Poll looked at the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate between Tom Udall and Marty (I'm still looking for my next job) Chavez. As everyone knows by now Tom Udall vanquished the Almighty Alcalde faster than the U.S. military deposed Saddam Hussein and with nary a shot fired, but in this week's Eye Poll Marty pulled it out by a single vote - not that it matters.

Of course the now ex-candidate sent out a get out the vote email to his supporters urging them to vote in our little unscientific poll, a fact that we had planned to reveal in this posting but Marty went and dropped out of the race before we could expose his shenanigans.

We're starting to wonder if we're starting to develop an Eye Poll curse similar to the Madden curse or the Chunky soup curse in football. Only time will tell as we take a look at the Republican side of the senate equation this week. Don't forget to vote!

Eye Poll: Scrap the Scam-eras

On the eve (hopefully) of the city council vote to suspend scam-era operations until Marty's task farce finishes it's work on the issue, it comes as no surprise that 67% of Eye readers wanted to get rid of the traffic scam. In last week's unscientific poll, 46% wanted to scrap the program and refund the fines, 21% simply wanted the program scraped, 7% wanted to lower the fines again, 25% wanted the program left alone, 1% didn't know, and 1% didn't care (read the results here).

No matter how you look at it 67% is a very large section of our readership population. It would be wise for the council to consider this system's growing unpopularity before they decide not to vote for a moratorium.

All of which brings to mind another issue. Councilor Winter must have the votes to suspend the rules to allow his moratorium to be even discussed. An easy out for wimpy councilors would be to simply vote against suspending the rules; which would mean that Councilor Winter's bill wouldn't be heard at this council meeting.

We've urged you to contact your councilors before and we're about to do it again. If you have already sent an email to the council - good work, but you might want to do it again tomorrow. The council has to realize that there are serious issues with the entire system from its claims of lowering accidents (it doesn't) to its complete and utter lack of due process that could more accurately be described as fraud.

We've received a copy of the class action lawsuit that was filed last Friday and have had a chance to skim through the filing. From our layman's perspective it looks damn good. We'll be talking about it more next week and we'll make a copy of it available for your own review as well.

This week's Eye Poll takes us back to politics. After all of the announcing to announce the leak to announce the announcement took place, last Thursday's entry by Congressman Tom Udall was something of a let down. That being said, we're almost positive (as positive as any Eye can be this early in a race) that he'll be the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate (unless of course he's hit by one of Marty's eco-friendly extra large buses that have been seen cruising the streets of Albuquerque lately). But that's our opinion; let us know what you think in this week's Eye Poll!

-----Council Emails-----

District 1 - Ken Sanchez - ksanchez@cabq.gov
District 2 - Debbie O'Malley - domalley@cabq.gov
District 3 - Isaac Benton - ibenton@cabq.gov
District 4 - Brad Winter - bwinter@cabq.gov
District 5 - Michael Cadigan - mcadigan@cabq.gov
District 6 - Rey Garduno - tkellerman@cabq.gov (Assistant to Councilor Garduno)
District 7 - Sally Mayer - smayer@cabq.gov
District 8 - Trudy Jones - tjones@cabq.gov
District 9 - Don Harris - dharris@cabq.gov

-----Update-----
One of the emails that we have been giving out has been incorrect. Rgarduno@cabq.gov apparently belongs to another RGarduno. We apologize for the inconvenience to Ms. Garduno.

Which brings up another gripe. Since our friends on the council have been allowed to hire their own personal assistants, they've taken their emails off the cabq.gov website and listed only their "policy analysts." We don't know about you, but those yahoos work for us and it's incumbent upon them to have a direct means of communication.

More importantly, they shouldn't be using paid staffers as a shield to keep us from taking them to task when we feel like it. They're the ones that signed up for this job and spent the money and time to be elected. (Ok... O'Malley and Garduno used our money but you get the point.) Criticism fair or not comes with the territory.

Eye Poll: Suspect Motives

To say that Eye readers are a little suspicious would be an incredible understatement. In our extended 2 week Eye Poll with 431 participants 80% indicated that the Almighty Alcalde might have had some alterior motives for forming a "task force" to "study" Albuquerque's camera scam. 31% believed that the mayor was (and is) worried about his U.S. Senate run, 3% believed that it was an attempt to fool the Legislature, 46% believed that it was both of the afore mentioned motives, 9% believed that it was due to the under performance of the system, 1% didn't know, and 10% didn't care.

We've kind of been amused by this whole scam-era thing. On one level it makes perfect sense - Marty's task force provides the perfect cover for his senate ambitions. On another level it could be a colossal mistake. Marty's task force has breathed new life into an issue that had faded somewhat over the past few months; bringing it up again simply reminded voters why they don't want anything to do with a Senator Marty Chavez.

Now we find out that the system that Marty made seems to be collecting money form the public and their nefarious autos when in fact the dastardly vehicles are innocent. We wonder if Marty may end up in a federal institution after all.

This week's Eye Poll is designed to give Marty's "task force" some ideas about what should be done about the scam-eras and the Marty-roo courts. Don't forget to vote!

Eye Poll: Defending the Flag

Not surprisingly (at least to us), Eye readers overwhelmingly decided that the charges against Peter Ryan Lynch should be dropped. 48% of readers felt that Mr. Lynch's actions were justifiable and charges should be dropped, another 34% felt that he should replace the flag and then the charges should be dropped, another 9% felt that he should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, 6% felt he should be prosecuted for criminal destruction of property and hate crimes, and 3% didn't know (review the results here).

82% of readers took the position that the charges should be dropped. It's important to protect the symbols of our country and our freedom. The first step toward losing our liberty is forgetting the symbols that remind us of the existence of that liberty. When we dishonor our own flag we tread on the very real freedoms that it represents; which inevitably leads to the loss of those freedoms. Eye readers have simply sided with a man who felt it was his duty to defend our flag.

About a week and a half ago APD Chief Ray Schultz told us that those of us who live in Albuquerque and are victims of crime are hurting our crime stat rankings by "over reporting" violent crime. The Chief went on to state that he "feel[s] safe." Since the Chief would like us to "feel" safe because he does, we'd like to know how you feel. Don't forget to vote in this week's Eye Poll!

Eye Poll: Katherine Martinez Soundly Defeats O'Malley

In another surprising turn of events, Katherine Martinez (M) who is running against City Council President Debbie O'Malley (D) soundly defeated Ms. O'Malley in this past week's Eye Poll. Ms. Martinez received 69% to Ms. O'Malley's 31% in an unscientific poll that can only be described as bucking the conventional wisdom (view the results here).

We honestly don't know how this will play out Tuesday. Our hunch is that the incumbent O'Malley will hold the seat easily, particularly if this election turns out to be a referendum on the Almighty Marty. However, if the election comes down to Councilor O'Malley's propensity to spend our tax dollars and her less than warm and fuzzy personality the Eye Poll may end up being a harbinger of things to come.

This week we wade into the tempestuous waters of the Flag Flap. We understand that Peter Ryan Lynch is receiving large amounts of support from Eye readers along with free legal services from attorney John D'Amato.

Curiously, the Saturday UNM Homecoming football game featured more United States flags than we have ever seen in University Stadium. We couldn't help but wonder if the administration was trying to project a sense of patriotism to donors and alumni after taking a beating in the press over the Mexican Flag Flap.

Frankly we were glad to see Old Glory featured so prominently and the crowd spontaneously singing our national anthem sent chills up our spine. We hate the fact that it takes a series of screw-ups, unfounded charges, and constant media attention to remind most of us that the American flag represents more than just a government, but freedom, liberty, and the sacrifices of patriots that made them possible.

Let us know what you think should happen to Mr. Lynch in this week's Eye Poll. Don't forget to vote!

Eye Poll: Surprising Results

This week's Eye Poll double header featured the four way race in district 6 and the district 4 re-poll. In district 4 the results (which we believed were suspect the first time) showed a narrowing of the gap between incumbent Councilor Winter and challenger de'Pascal. However with 111 fewer participants due to more stringent voting rules, de'Pascal still ended up with an 8 point advantage with 54% to Winter's 46% (view the results here).

We always stress that this is an unscientific poll and we believe the increased voting security is at least partially responsible for the change in the poll results. One way or the other the Eye Poll shows a determination by the de'Pascal camp to get out their voters at least for the Eye Poll. It remains to be seen whether or not they will be able to muster enough votes on election day and during early voting which is now in progress.

Our featured Eye Poll took a look at the vacant seat of Councilor Martin Heinrich, district 6. This is a four way race between Rey Garduno (D), Joan Griffin (M), Blair Kauffman (D), and Kevin Wilson (R). Martycrat Joan Griffin took this one with 41% of the vote, Kevin Wilson was surprisingly strong with pulling 37%, Rey Garduno thought to be the odds on favorite only got 19% of the vote, and Blair Kauffman rounded out the group with 3% (view the results here).

Our unscientific poll showed surprising strength from Republican Kevin Wilson. He seems to have run a fairly high profile campaign, at least from the outside. It will be interesting to see whether the 2 Democrats and the Martycrat (registered as a D) end up splitting the vote enough to allow Mr. Wilson to slide into the seat.

This week we take a look at the last two candidates who are running for the district 2 council seat. Incumbent Council President is the odds on favorite, but it will be interesting to see what effect the Almighty Mayor's endorsement will have on the Martinez campaign; especially in light of the mayor's recent media problems. Don't forget to vote!

Eye Poll: Love for the Honey Bee

Last week's Eye Poll caught us by surprise early in the week as challenger Paulette de'Pascal opened up a 20 point lead over incumbent Brad Winter in an Eye Poll that saw even more votes (468) than the mayoral job approval poll (465) that we ran back in June. Since the numbers seemed strange, we started to look at our site statistics and found not only unusually high traffic, but large numbers of visitors coming from City of Albuquerque IP addresses.

We started to suspect that Captain Payne had set his course on pushing the Eye Poll. It wasn't until later in the week that we received confirmation from a couple of our Eyes that indeed there was a quite effort to push last week's Eye Poll. The push didn't surprise us as it's happened before when the Almighty Mayor himself blasted out an email to his campaign supporters urging them to vote for his approval. His gambit failed by 10 points (view the results here).

What to do? We admit that our Eye Poll is unscientific at best. However, we do want it to represent the opinions of Eye Readers as accurately as possible. So... in order to achieve that goal, we decided to do two things.

First, we changed the security parameters of the poll in order to make it harder for one person to pump up the votes for a specific candidate. Second, we decided to run the district 4 poll again; which seemed only fair in light of last week's push.

So... this week we feature two Eye Polls - a district 6 poll, and a repeat of the district 4 poll. Don't forget to vote!

Eye Poll: Carrying for Students

We said that APS Police carrying their sidearm was an 80% issue with the general public. We were wrong... according to this past week's Eye Poll it's an 85% issue. Eye readers rejected the APS School Board's decision to disarm APS Police during school hours with 85% of participants voting to allow APS police to carry their weapon, 15% did not want them to carry a sidearm, and 1 lone vote didn't care (see the results of our unscientific poll here).

We don't really know what they've been smoking down there at the school board, but really what are APS Police officers supposed to use to stop murderous thugs from gunning down children... harsh language? It's pretty clear that the board does not represent the general public when it comes to public safety and the security of the students and teachers in their charge.

It's September now and in the 2007 election season is in full swing so... this week we'll be taking a look at the District 9 recall election. The question of Don Harris continuing as district 9's councilor will be on the ballot in October, so it's our Eye Poll this week. Don't forget to vote!

The Meaning of Illegal

It's not about race, it's not about color, and it's not about point of origin, Eye readers decide that illegals means illegal. With 174 participants, this week's Eye Poll overwhelmingly determines one thing illegals need to be reported to federal officials. Readers disagree on exactly when they should be reported but 79% of readers believe that illegals should be reported to federal authorities in this unscientific poll.

We've said that this is an 80% issue and our readers proved us correct. 45% of readers believe that illegals should be reported to ICE whenever APD officers come into contact with them, 22% believe that illegals should be reported to ICE except when they are victims of crime, 17 % believe APD officers should follow the new SOP (whatever that truly is), 12% believe that APD should use department resources to actively pursue illegals, 2% believe they should never be reported, 1% don't know, and 1% don't care.

Whew! Remind us to make our Eye Poll answers shorter! This poll while unscientific illustrates just how much people generally believe that respect for our laws is a prerequisite for those who wish to come to our country. The United States is a place of liberty and prosperity that is guaranteed by our mutual respect for the law. Our Constitution guarantees us the ability to change those laws or at least the politicians who created them. (Look out scam-era supporters in the Chavez administration and on the council.)

This week the Eye Poll takes aim at the recent controversy surrounding APS Police and whether they should be given the tools necessary to protect the students and faculty in their care. Don't forget to vote!

Eye Poll: Council Panned

In a recent Eye Poll the Almighty Alcalde was panned by a margin of 10 points. This time Eye readers decided to voice their dissatisfaction with the city council. We've suspected that folks generally didn't have a positive opinion of the council for sometime. This Council Eye Poll confirmed our suspicions with 66% disapproving; only 31% approving, 2% didn't know, and 1% didn't care. Remember, this is an unscientific poll but a margin of 35 points is hard to ignore.

We generally view the council as being simultaneously inept and overbearing. They love to overlook the mundane but most important issues like funding APD, AFD, building and repairing infrastructure, in favor of sexier or more narrowly focused ones like trolleys, big box ordinances, affordable housing, etc. The biggest problem with the council is that they feel like they need to do something, which in this case means create laws.

When you spend your time pandering to very narrow interest groups everyone else feels neglected. It's no surprise that almost 2/3rds of us don't think much of them.

On to other things like this week's Eye Poll. You knew this was coming after last week's Mighty Marty Mayoral mistake. Yep... immigration is the topic. Let us know what you think APDs policy towards known illegals should be.

One more thing...

A while back we started a segment called letters to the Eye. If you'd like to be featured, send us your best post. If we like it... up it goes! You don't have to agree with us but you can be sure that if you don't we'll have a comment or two about it. We promise not to edit it unless it contains particularly vile language, but we're also not going to run spell check on it either. (We've got enough trouble trying to keep our grammar semi-correct.) Send your letters to editor@eyeonalbuquerque.com.

Eye Poll: Razor Thin

This week's Eye Poll featured Council President, Debbie O'Malley. Eye readers panned the councilor by a 5 point margin in our unscientific poll with 42% approving of her performance, 47% disapproving, 7% don't know, and 3% don't care. This can't be great news for the council president as she is up for re-election this year and has drawn a democrat as an opponent.

This past week we were treated to polls that showed one of the lowest approval ratings (16%) in history for the U.S. Congress, and while we have polled a couple of councilors we haven't gotten a read on the overall approval rating of Albuquerque's legislative body. Monday the city council will meet for the first time since June 18th. Frankly, we believe that we're all safer when the council is on vacation. So we're lobbying to increase the amount of time its members spend not voting on things that either take our money or limit our liberty; things like red light scam-era programs, trolleys, Metropolitan Redevelopment Areas (a.k.a. blighted areas), etc.

We've got four more months of this council and the next council could see a significant change with as many as 5 seats changing. Seems like a perfect time to let them know how they are doing. Don't forget to vote!

Eye Poll: Pay Them

Last week's Eye Poll turned out to be somewhat of a surprise. The city council has been busy fighting with the mayor and has made some controversial moves lately like the 19th Century Street Car tax and the Councilor Protection Act. Even so, Eye On Albuquerque readers voted to give councilors a raise from approx $10,000 a year to almost $30,000 a year.

In our unscientific poll 46% voted to raise the compensation for councilors to 33% of the mayor's salary, 35% believed that the current compensation was adequate, 10% thought they were already paid too much, 6% believed they should receive more than $30,000 a year, and 3% didn't know. (See the full results here.)

We believe that despite our displeasure with a number of councilors, their job takes more effort than dropping in to city hall 3 Mondays a month to vote. It's really a full time job and compensation should reflect both the expectations of constituents and importance of the office.

This week we're taking a look at taxpayer financing of municipal elections. As you may have guessed the Albuquerque Open and Ethical Elections ordinance is one of our pet peeves. We think it's madness to give taxpayer money to candidates to run for office. In New Mexico we've already got a problem with elected officials feathering their own nests with taxpayer money; we don't need the unelected getting in on the act too.

This week it's your turn to tell us your opinion by voting in the Eye Poll. Don't forget to vote!

Eye Poll: Keep it Easy

So much for suspense. Unlike other Eye Polls, this one was never even close. In fact, we're pretty sure the votes not to change the charter to make it more difficult to recall a councilor never dipped below 90%.

The final tally of our unscientific poll of 149 Eye On Albuquerque participants... 92% believed that the current rules for recalling councilors (and mayors) should remain the same, 6% believed it should be made harder (thank you councilors Loy and Harris for your participation) and 2% either didn't know or didn't care. We don't believe that these results would be too far off a poll of the general public, certainly not enough to predict a charter change come October. Looks to us like councilors will still be directly accountable to their constituents for the foreseeable future and will not have the protection of a friendly mayor or city clerk.

This week's Eye Poll takes on the question of whether councilors should receive additional compensation. Don't forget to vote!

Chief Ray Schultz: Disapprove

A few weeks back the much talked about (at least on this blog) no confidence vote involving Chief Ray Schultz was withdrawn by the APOA members that originally called for the vote. Our Eyes tell us that Chief Schultz and Mayor Chavez really didn't want risk the chief getting a vote of no confidence, so they quickly met with the officers involved and addressed their concerns. We believe that problems go deeper than the few issues raised by the no confidence movement, so we decided to do a little vote of our own.

In last week's unscientific Eye Poll of 261 voters, Chief Schultz got an approval rating of just 33%. Eye On Albuquerque readers overwhelmingly disapproved (60%)of the job Ray Schultz is doing as Chief of APD, while 5% didn't know and 2% didn't care.

We want to remind our readers that the chief serves at the pleasure of the Almighty Mayor and that any disapproval numbers should reflect directly on the policies of the Chavez administration as well as the leadership of APD.

This week's Eye Poll takes on the issue of making it harder to recall city councilors. We talked about it here. In October, voters will get the chance to make their opinion law. This week, Eye Poll voters will get to voice their opinion on what should happen in October. Don't forget to vote!

Eye Poll: Get Rid of Them

We weren't really surprised by the outcome of this week's Eye Poll. Frankly, it wasn't ever close. Even with two opportunities to keep the program, Eye On Albuquerque readers overwhelmingly preferred getting rid of Marty's scam-era's. Of the 377 participants, 73% preferred system removal, 14% wanted to keep the cameras, but lower the fines, 12% wanted to keep the program as it is, and 1% didn't care. (See the final results here.)

Remember, this is an un-scientific poll and Eye readers may be predisposed to disliking the scam-eras but... It still amazes us that Mayor Marty is willing to spend soooo much political capital on a program that can only be characterized as unpopular. It's obvious that the city's making huge amounts of money (some reports place the numbers at over $9 MILLION). But in light of Marty's willingness to change the smoking ban to allow golfers to ruin their lungs, this fight to the death attitude makes little sense. What's keeping the mayor so solidly behind this program? It can't be public safety, and it's surely not public opinion. It has to be something else.