Several local paint suppliers have teamed up with Keep Albany-Dougherty Beautiful and Albany Mayor Willie Adams to make November “Spruce up Albany” month. The paint stores will offer discounts, and the Herald article about it says “The overall purpose of the program is for those living in the Good Life City to feel better about themselves, and for visitors to get a good impression, officials say.”

Here’s a thought. If you want people to feel better about themselves and for visitors to get a good impression of Albany, why not focus on things that matter?

Every day, we are plagued by more and more crime. Robberies seem an hourly occurrence. Shootings are far, far to common. Everywhere people look, there’s crime. And yet, the most significant anti-crime spending in the past 12 months has been for super-Segways and video surveillance cameras that monitor a low crime part of town and aren’t even manned most of the time.

We are bleeding jobs and what may be a terminal rate. With the loss of Merck and Cooper, we’re hurting. Manufacturing jobs are still possible, but they’re not going to just appear in Albany and beg to come here. Local officials have to hustle for those jobs. You get enough of those, not only will our local economy improve, but I’m willing to bet that crime will decrease a significant amount.

How about dealing with the perceived corruption in this town? The recent indictments against Buie and company are a great start, but they’re only a start. There needs to be more investigation by outside parties, ones who can’t be bought or corrupted themselves. Personally, I like the idea of the FBI, but I’m open to other folks, too. We need to destroy even the perception of corruption to have a chance.

Everywhere you look, Albany appears to many to be a city in decline. In a cartoon in the Albany Journal, parallels are drawn between Albany and Detroit, and that’s not far from the truth. A coat of paint and some good intentions aren’t going to do it. We need actual plans and actual solutions. Is Mayor Adams even capable of coming up with anything like that? So far, I haven’t seen evidence of that. I’ve only seen evidence that he can stick his head in the sand and pretend a problem doesn’t exist with the best of them.

People of Albany, we deserve better, don’t you agree?

Written by Tom Knighton. Read his blog at SWGA Politics.com. A lifelong political junkie, Tom started out his adult life as a journalism major at Darton College before leaving school to serve his nation as a U.S. Navy Corpsman. Through the years, he has watched government from outside and inside. A former Reagan supporter, then later a Democrat, Tom now finds himself quite comfortable as a card carrying Libertarian and all around smart-elec.