Fort Consternation was definitely looking up from when he had left it. The surplus was very comfortable and there was a good deal of cash in the coffers. Plus, the last mayor had made education their top priority, and the effects could be seen. Unfortunately, it seemed they were a bit too interested in it, since several overfunded museums existed throughout the city. Myth's first act was to cut the spending on those and direct them to needy schools.
While education was looking good, health was a major issue. Southside's hospital had reached full capacity even with no ambulance funding, and that was one of the better-off ones! Many others were direly unfunded, with Central Park's hospital having nearly twice as many patients as it could handle. Health care was therefore Myth's #1 priority this term.
Two hospitals were created right off the bat: Corner Care Center in the southwest corner of the city and Beachfront Care near, well, the beach. Unfortunately, a museum had to be destroyed to fit the latter, but it was rather underused, anyway.
At this point, costs got a bit high for Myth's taste, so a few very old coal plants were demolished. The city had a comfortable surplus of power even after they were gone, anyway. Unfortunately, the Corner Care Center was quickly overwhelmed by patients, and so an annex had to be founded just a few blocks away to split the load.
This seemed to do the trick, and within a few months and with a little jiggering of the ambulance funding to overlap hospitals, every hospital but Central Park was doing good. After this, a new target was made, unrelated to health. Industry was a central feature of the city, from its very beginning. But now, high-tech industry was in huge demand, and it promised clean jobs. In a riskymove, Myth raised taxes on manufacturers to 11%, driving away any new demand for them. Then, he demolished an area of industry in the southern part of the city to see if his gamble would work.
And work it did, beyond his expectations. Tech moved in immediately, filling up the area. Fort Consternation could now move beyond the industry that had aided it for so long.
However, before he could continue his crusade on manufacturers, a huge strike broke out at Fort Consternation Medical Center. The poor hospital was at full funding and only serviced the immediate area, but still it was nearly double capacity.
Myth had to create a new hospital to relieve it, but there seemed to be nowhere it could happen without tearing down a skyscraper. Finally, he found a pair of dilapidated mansions that could go, and go they did, to bring in Downtown Medical Center. To his dismay, though, this place, too, was immediately swamped.
Finally, he placed down a third hospital, as a last shot at keeping the area healthy. Trifecta Medical Center took another mansion with it, but also some apartment buildings. And, again to his dismay, it was immediately over capacity...
But when he checked the other two, he found they were now below capacity! Again, some careful adjustment of the ambulance funding left the first two hospitals in the clear, with Trifecta only about 500 over capacity, a much more manageable level.
With that crisis solved, Myth looked over to the area around the Bank of China tower. Unfortunately, industry had sprung up at the base of the skyscraper, dirtying up the area. Commercial areas benefited from being near landmarks, and so the industrial area was demolished and commercial zoned in its wake. A similar story happened near the Movie Studio next to Hollywood Hill, but high-tech sprung up rather than commercial areas. Maybe they could be used for sci-fi films?
Finally, towards the end of the term, the population peaked at over 500,000 people. Unfortunately, after a large fire that got out of hand, that number quickly dropped by 3,000, and would not reach it again before the end of the term. The final work Myth did in this term was to create a Waste to Energy Plant to help with landfill concerns, as the current landfills were quickly nearing capacity.
Final Stats
Population: 496,873 (+5,384)
Cash: $599,046 (+$520,406)
Surplus: $13,619/month (+$4,740)
Some notes: Apparently, I'm bad at spending money. There can be worse problems, I suppose. I'll be excited to see what future mayors will do with the huge deposits I've left Fort Consternation and New Eden (Note to Peck: the city's name is Eden Prime on the first page. Also, my last term in Fort Consternation currently links to your term).
ff -CPUCount:1 -EH
I'll go back to it in a few days, but that was the end of that night's play.
