Editor’s note: On March 29, 1960, White Plains, the county seat of New York State‘s wealthy Westchester area, received a federal grant of $9,199,000 for an urban renewal Project in the center of the city.

Appropriate comment on such Procedure had appeared somewhat earlier by reporter Jack Mabley in the Chicago Daily News of March 14:

$6,000 To Plan Highland Park

Maybe somebody can tell me what business it is of the federal government to spend federal tax money to help people of Highland Park, Illinois, draw up a master plan.

What could be more local than a plan for streets and sew­ers and traffic control and apartment regulations in a small Illinois suburb?

This is nearly the ultimate absurdity of federal interven­tion in local affairs.

The absurdity is com­pounded by the fact that High­land Park is a very wealthy suburb populated largely by hard core Republicans wholive in large expensive homes and spend a good deal of time bellyaching about federal spending and socialistic schemes.

But Highland Park was hap­py to apply for and accept $6,000 from the federal Urban Renewal Administration as a grant to help them make a plan.

This, in a nutshell, is one reason why we are in such a financial mess in Washington.

"We’ve got to cut taxes, we’ve got to cut spending. Just wait till I get mine, and then let’s all economize."

The conservatives in High­land Park should be ashamed of this.