Westfield reworks Grand Junction Plaza design to avoid $13 million budget overrun
FREE NEWSLETTERS The updated design for Westfield s Grand Junction Plaza. (Image courtesy of the city of Westfield)
Westfield officials have redesigned their proposed $35 million Grand Junction Plaza project to avoid spending the extra millions it would take to build the park as it was originally approved.
Jeremy Lollar, the city’s public works director, updated the Westfield City Council on the project’s higher-than-expected construction bids on Monday and detailed the changes made to avoid spending $13 million more than what was budgeted.
The new design for the six-acre park on the southwest side of Main and Union streets features a concrete stage instead of an amphitheater and replaces a permanent skating rink with a seasonal installation. Other changes include a consolidated playground, less-expensive materials throughout the park and the elimination
in other words, no short-term crs, no short-term debt ceilings. it will at least present to the american people what they would expect, which is that the government would operate in a normal fashion. i think that s worth a lot, and we knew we d have to give with this democratic house. more spending on the domestic side. we knew that going in. i think secretary mnuchin did a wonderful job, spectacular job, in fact, negotiating this with speaker pelosi. shannon: what do you say to the critics, fiscal conservatives, who say you and the white house have lost significant leverage. he mentioned if it goes past the next presidential election. how do you address their concerns? if they are really concerned about spending, this is not the problem. entitlements are the problem. they are really popular. it s hard to explain for television but is less than half of what we actually spend we get to vote on. that debt is way too large.
i don t like going up i never was a standup comic. i don t like getting up in front of audience. this radio studio suits me just fine. you know what struck me as even odd, i knew he was a hillary clinton fan. he was a supporter of hers. so the whole thing was weird. i am i have been a hillary clinton supporter way back before even when obama, when she was 2008. yeah. i i think she s a terrific public servant. i thought her husband was the best president we ever had. my colleague, michael smerconish, host of cnn s smerconish is was this afternoon. michael, stern says this all started as a publicity stunt. your reaction. so, full confession, i have been a howard fan for 30 years. he is the preset in my car and has been all that time. it s interesting because in the book, which, of course, i bought, you get to read the partial transcripts of years of donald trump interviews with
stalled. one member, chip roy from texas, conservative member of congress, noted problems with the bill throughout the course of the last couple of months did object. this was his rationale. i tell them that the democrats who have been fiddling for eight months playing politics instead of getting done what they should have gotten done which is putting forward a fiscally responsible bill that doesn t rack up debt, deals with the border and deals with the issues in the communities affected by disaster we could have gotten this done. reporter: this bill has been a mess for a number of months and traditionally disaster relief bills given the proximity to certain lawmakers, need for people to get the assistance moved quickly in congress. obviously, fiscal conservatives, never a huge fan of them, had huge bipartisan support. yesterday, 85 senators voting in favor of something, at this pointing you rarely get 85 senators to vote in offer of anything at the same time and getting the presid
point but, you know, in addition to policy, paul, what makes walker stand out is he has one of the best political organizations of any governor of either party in the country and you just don t count him out. as you said, he s won 3 elections for governor even though it s two terms, he never gets more than 51, 52% of the vote but he always wins an he s been able to get allies nominated and elected too. so right now it s a toss-up but that s one you should watch every day all the way to election day. paul: let s turn to new england states because that s now seen as leftist center stronghold and yet you pointed out this week in news letter that the republicans could actually win every single one of those states in governorships if everything fell in the right direction, what s happening there? what s happening there is, paul, the republicans are adapting to local conditions and nominating candidates who can win. that is social moderates, fiscal