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going ahead with the improvement, but that's not why we're here. I might say something about the first hearing we had and when there was a 53% petition. Sitting up here at the City Council level, when the people come before us on a hearing of this kind, we look at that 53% and we have to assume that the other 47% - or roughly half - are probably evenly divided as well. At least not totally opposed. When a 50% petition comes before us, essentially that means that 25% or fewer of the people are really opposed to the project. As the Mayor said earlier, there was only one person who spoke against the project on the night of the hearing. Sitting from our perspective, it looked like okay, it's 53% petitioned, but there's no great opposition to it and we voted it in. That tends to be the way the hearing process happens when one comes to the City Council. I would also say this - some of you will recall that we had a general street improvement project before the City a few years ago and it got voted down on a City-wide basis. I'm one that would be in favor of reinstating that. I think that on an overall basis we should be improving the streets and we should be doing it maybe over a five year program - one section of the City at a time - and go at it - and that way we all have to deal with it and it's not unfair to anyone because it becomes a City-wide project. Again, that's not why we're here tonight. What's before us is specifically the improvement of a street, where a substantial majority at this point are opposed to it. As members of the City Council, even in that situation, if the street was in terrible shape, I might say yes, let's put the street in any way because it needs it. I've driven the street twice as recently as the evening before coming to this meeting. The street is not in bad shape. Times have been tough. This is not the time to spend money if it's not needed. There is still a lot of unemployment. I don't know if there's any unemployment along the street. I hear from the Governor's office in the last few days that they're talking about now taking away our deduction from the state income tax for our federal tax, which is going to cost all of us a lot of money if it happens, and this is just not the time to take on unneeded and, in this case, unwanted City expenditures. I guess the thing that bothers me most about this petition is t~t the way it stands now, one neighbor who wants it is in a position to hoist a $1,000 expenditure on each of two neigh- bors next to him. It's about a one to three ratio. There's something very unfair about one person being able to spend another's money. That's kind of where we are here tonight. Generally, if we have a petition of this kind where the street is not in that bad of shape, my own feeling is that there should be a substantial majority and then the few people that are left, okay - that's something they have to put up with as a matter of progress. But we don't have any of those condi- tions tonight. We have a street that doesn't need the improvement. We have a substantial plurality against the petition. -12-