The Mayor made a quick pie chart of the types of fuel used to power the city:
Three-quarters heavily-polluting fossil fuels, and half of the rest from garbage! Lovely! However, even though the city was awash with cash, the mayor didn't want to spend too many simoleons on power. The future was not fusion, nor was it solar - at least, not yet. Instead, the Mayor commissioned the city's first moderately-polluting natural gas power plant.
The Mayor was pleased to find that the natural gas power plant was in fact profitable. By running the other plants closer to designed capacity, the city was now spending slightly less on power while having slightly more available. Just think how much money a coal plant would have saved!
The Mayor's other day-one actions were to implement a tourism promotion program at a low cost of 50 simoleons per month. Visit civfanatics.com for more details! And, yes, to double dirty industry tax. Fort Consternation would be transformed in the next five years.
In February, a petition for a larger landing strip was denied. The need was demonstrated, but the Mayor had larger plans than a puny landing strip!
The Mayor also decided to prune costs. He saw that some areas were spending way more than necessary on healthcare.
While having more doctors than patients in Peck's Retreat may have been nice, Sims were already complaining about high health insurance costs, so this couldn't continue!
When all was said and done, 1800 simoleons per month, or a sixth of the healthcare budget, was trimmed, while keeping coverage for everyone already receiving it. The Mayor turned down an offer to overhaul Medicaid in favor of staying in Fort Consternation.
The Mayor was amused to find the following elementary school with one student:
Apparently very few families with young children decided to live in Peck's Resort. In fact, the schools in general were under-enrolled. The one exception was that students were clamoring to get into MoreEpicThanYou Memorial High School.
All said, the Mayor cut another 1800 simoleons per month from education, a seventh of its budget. Simultaneously deciding to cut manufacturing taxes to 7%, he soon found himself being invited to tea parties everywhere.
The Airport petitioners came again in March, so the Mayor decided to let them expand the airstrip for now. But soon, it would be obsolete!
In April, the Mayor commissioned the first major construction project of his term - and it proved to be major indeed! The Fort Consternation Intra-City Highway System!
The plan with the initial highway was to both relieve congestion and reduce commute times between the original heart of the city and the beachfront area. The old avenues were near capacity, and had enough streets crossing them to slow down traffic considerably. With the new highway, getting from one end of the city to the other should be a breeze.
The Mayor had hoped to expand the highway farther, north into METY Memorial Hill's industry and past the baseball stadium, and south both via the farms and over the hills to link to the south side. But the cost of the highway, the interchanges, and the rights-of-way proved to be much higher than anticipated, so for now the Mayor was going to see how the first stretch of highway was received.
The construction did cause much destruction as well. The railroad had to be re-routed, but all stops would be kept. A medical center was demolished, but rebuilt right near an off-ramp that should allow quicker access. And Uncle Peck's Mass Education Facility, as well as a couple of other schools, met their doom. But they were rebuilt, much to the dismay of the students.
In the summer of that first year, the Mayor witnessed the opening of the first commercial skyscraper in Fort Consternation!
Celebratory helicopter rides were given, and the mayor thought perhaps expanding the landing strip was paying off after all.
Year Two of the term began with an anti-pollution crusade.
Adios, dirty industry! Though there still would be some on METY hill and by the coal plants - the Mayor didn't want to be too drastic in taking it out all at once.
The immediate effects of this were mass unemployment, and a greater-than-20% drop in air and water pollution.
By summer, manufacturing was moving in, so the Mayor was pleased.
So were the students at MoreEpicThanYouMemorial High School, for that spring their teachers had gone on strike. Unfortunately for them, this led to a new high school being constructed in the area.
That same summer, the Mayor established the Circle Line around Central Park.
Someday, the subway networks would meet. For now, small-scale subways!
Another hill was flattened in the fall to make room for more commerce.
By January of Year 3, the highway was proving immensely popular - too popular for its main feeder in the beach area.
10,000 cars... that's too much even for a one-way road. Congestion was, needless to say, horrendous. For the time being, the solution was to redesign the highway in the area to add a third on-ramp, and thus decrease the dependence on the one-way street.
The Beach Line subway was opened that summer.
It was hoped that this, too, would aid congestion issues in the area. The Circle Line had already proven immensely popular.
Spring of the fourth year saw funds allocated for Fort Consternation International Airport.
And so it was that the end of the farms' time was signaled. There was simply no other flat, open space for an airport. Avenues now went past the farms, and one linked up with the built-up areas as well. Traffic at the airport was soon well past what the landing strip could have handled. And there was even a call for a convention center! This was built along a new avenue a few months after the airport opened.
The Mayor was pleased that it was now possible to take trips nearly wherever you wished from Fort Consternation.
In the summer, the Mayor built the Industrial Line of the subway. This was connected with the Circle Line and Beach Line to form a complete system, outside of the Southside Subway.
Late that year, the subway network was extended so that the Industrial Line would reach the Southside Line via an elevated rail connection at the airport.
You could now get to any part of Fort Consternation via the Underground! Admittedly, there were still a lot of areas that weren't within walking distance yet, but it was a good start.
To begin his last year in office, the Mayor targeted the first new hamlet that had been built for vertical growth.
First a subway was added, then permission granted for high-rises.
Sadly, nothing was to come of this zoning. A recession hit Fort Consternation in the Mayor's last year, with 10,000 people leaving the city and several businesses closing. In typical lame duck fashion, the mayor did nothing. Well, not quite nothing...
He didn't fiddle while Fort Consternation burned, instead dispatching many fire trucks. Ah, the good old days of frequent fires!
So it was that the mayor left Fort Consternation a smaller city than it had been by a small margin, but with big-city infrastructure. The Mayor liked to describe this term with the following graph:
Of course, that didn't show that nearly as many cars were on the road as before, and the change was mostly from busses and trains. It also didn't show that Fort Consternation now had ferry traffic of a couple dozen people per day. But the Mayor would take the subway's steady progress!
The Mayor had also learned that in a big city, highways and subways were
expensive. Probably half a million simoleons had been spent between highways, subways, and the new airport. About a quarter million alone had gone to the initial highway buildout. Fortunately, the city wasn't broke.
Fort Consternation
Population: 211,619 (-3091)
Funds: $239,331 (-162,570)
Mayor Rating: 11/12 (no change)
Mayor: MoreEpicThanYou
Link to city:
http://www.mediafire.com/?su2r2i547425hf2
But hey, take your time and maybe fill up all the available area first. There's so little room when you really start to build a good city... You have to wonder why they chose to limit city tile size to a ridiculous extent in the new SimCity, when all the fans were hoping for a move in the opposite direction. But then that game is broken on so many levels that it's better not to think about it in order not to become too depressed. I wonder if there will ever be a new SimCity...
