As the Providence Journal reports, the City of Pawtucket in Rhode Island will be using $550,000 in federal “stimulus” money to build a skateboarding park and renovate tennis and basketball courts at a local high school.

The city’s planning director explained that the money is for shovel-ready projects and the city is ready to go on these two projects. The funds will be made available through the federal “Community Development Block Program.”
 
The federal trillion dollar spending and debt package cleared Congress on Friday February 13, only hours after the conference report and explaining statements were made available for public scrutiny.
 
Taxpayer advocates wonder how this project ties in with the promise that the “stimulus” money would be spent on “critical” projects. Several weeks prior to passage of the package President Obama had stated: “What we need to do is examine: What are the projects where we’re going to get the most bang for the buck? How are we going to make sure taxpayers are protected?” adding that “the days of just pork coming out of Congress as a strategy, those days are over.”
 
Says taxpayer advocate Grover Norquist:
We always felt that taxpayers were being taken for a ride with this ‘stimulus’ package, and now they are quite literally.
 
That’s what you get when you hastily cobble together a massive spending package and then let nobody look at it before you vote on it – haste makes waste. I am sure taxpayers will appreciate knowing that the ‘must pass or else’ package focuses on such ‘critical’ projects like skateboarding parks, which are just known to spur economic growth, right?
For a pdf version of the press release click here.