Difficult choices all year round

New projects mean new jobs and more money flowing into municipal coffers, which is particularly desirable in an election year. Investors mainly associate the run-up to local elections as a period when administrative procedures get drawn out and town clerks are impotent, whereas council leaders and mayors are more willing than usual to have themselves photographed at the openings of buildings or when putting their signatures to schemes intended to transform the city into a land of milk and honey (if only at some undetermined point in the future). So how has the marriage of private capital and local government been working out this time around? The ideal relationship Virtually all construction projects are conceived and executed with the close involvement of local authorities – and the bigger the project, the more valuable and more necessary the local government’s support is. Without good relations it would not only be difficult to carry out commercial projects, it would so