Rochester’s fast ferry has been sold to a company that will use it on the English Channel.

Once the sale closes next week, the city will take the money and repay $7.5 million borrowed from city insurance reserves for shut-down expenses. The remainder, less a brokerage fee, will be applied to a $40 million debt owed to Australian lender Export Finance and Insurance Corp. The city borrowed from EFIC to buy the ship for $32 million in February 2005 and restart the Rochester-to-Toronto service last June.

Thomas Richards, the city’s corporation counsel who negotiated the sale, said the remaining debt of slightly less than $20 million will become a taxpayer obligation.

Twenty million. That’s what we’re stuck with. Oh, and the public embarrassment.

Giving up on the ferry was a retreat. But it was a retreat from a position that was untenable. The people of Rochester deserve better.

So how about, for starters, applying the lessons we’ve learned on the ferry to our thinking on the so-called Renaissance Square.

Just because our politicians want to strike heroic poses and direct taxpayer money to a project doesn’t mean it’s right for our city. Pork spending is not good governance.

Here’s a post I wrote on Renaissance Square that compares it to a Miami art fair that has led to measurable economic growth. Check out the difference in the price tags. Renaissance Square: “estimated” cost $230 million. Art Basel: less than $5 million the first year. Current budget (three years later): $14.4 million.

Note also that the growth of the budget came after the fair had started proving itself out.

No, we’re not Miami. But there’s no reason we can’t learn from what Miami has done. Ya know, it’s that best practices thing. It’s also the kind of governance that can navigate a city to greatness instead of crashing it into a dock.