Dear Editor:
You know how we just had a vote on a tax increase that included funds for "upgrades" and "additions" to the original conference center proposal? Turns out there never was an original proposal or agreement with a hotelier. Not according to any of the city officials. There was just a tax increase. We passed a lodging tax that raised between $8 million and $9 million. You know how much it takes to build the originally proposed/not proposed conference center - $20 million.
So I guess this raises a few questions in my mind: If there never was an original proposal, then what were they proposing to upgrade? Why were the voters not informed that we were millions of dollars short of the original proposal (that was of course, never proposed.) Whose responsibility was it to go down to the Chamber and tap someone on the shoulder and just tell them "Hey, before you go around talking about upgrades you should know that we don't have enough money to build anything." I'm sure that would have been useful information to the Chamber and for folks who voted?
Just how dumb was this in real terms? It would be sort of like me going to a bank and asking for a construction loan to build a house and the bank telling me that I was only approved for half of the needed funds. Then, rather than focusing on how I could come up with the other half I needed, I instead chose to apply for a loan at a different bank that would go towards upgrades to the house that I could never afford to build in the first place. True masterminds we have managing our city's affairs.Â
None of them feel like they had any responsibility to let us know they were way short on funds to build any sort of conference center. They told me that voters weren't ever given the impression that the lodging tax would build a conference center. Nice. However, being the upfront people that they are, they did come out and let us know a week after the Transform vote that we never had the money to build the conference center in the first place. Surprisingly, the city official quoted in the article stated that we were short by almost the exact amount of money that the failed tax increase would have provided.
That's either quite a coincidence or a high dollar shell game. This guy is betting the latter.Â