First one:
I just watched the City Council meeting and the City Manager explanation to City Councilor Rose why it is not a $157 million project. Summarizing what I thought I heard the stadium, bricks and mortar to build the stadium cost $117 million. Independant of this cost, the City is spending $40 million to acquire the land, relocate the businesses and demolish the buildings (the City Manager stated something else about soil that I did not clearly hear) which the stadium is being built on. Independant? Where are you building the stadium, on the land you spent $40 million for, so the total stadium costs in total is $157 million.period! The worst part of watching this explanation was City Councilor Rose sat there and seemed to just nod like a bobble head as if this explanation actually made sense.
Second one
Continuing
highlighting the lunacy and how good the City negotiates, In
consideration for issuing more bonds for the WooSox the City got the
WooSox to drop five years off a sponsorship guarantee. Why did the City
guarantee CORPORATE sponsorship to begin with. The City got back
something it should have never agreed to in the first place.
Our Comment
This project started out at 94.5 million with the PawSox kicking in $6,000,000 in cash for the stadium and site acquisition. In less then 30 months it has risen to $157 million and it appears the PawSox will not kick in a dime up front.
This is considered good negotiations. We would would had to see how much this would cost the tax payers, if this was bad negotiations???
Comments
An example, the City described a couple of projects that are in design currently and will be built in the future, but they neglected to update the status of the development across the street. Some time ago I believe it was reported that the construction of the housing was going to start by the end of last year. I drove by the site a couple of weeks ago and did not see any work which makes people wonder what is actually happening. When updates are not provided it causes people to think something is wrong. Kristian King requested periodic updates, to date I have not heard of any. Since the construction is slated to be completed in a couple of months the focus will most likely be diverted to some other issue. It won't be until the City starts making payments on the bonds without the revenue from the delayed development that people will question "how did this happen". The City should start with the requested updates on the development for the sake of transparency which has been seriously lacking.
Also, there was a good question from Donna Colorio that got me thinking. She questioned the boundaries of all these "districts" to which the City responded that the Canal District, which has successfully developed organically, is not part of this District. It makes you wonder what would happen if the City did nothing. Would the Canal District have expanded on its own?
Isn't that a violation of not only the City Council's rule bu the Open Meetings law?
This is $157 millions of OUR money! On rthe heels of a massive tax increase and the cowardly passage of an ever widening dual tax rate. That rate will drive any business that doesn't get a sweetheart deal out of the city (unless they can pants the city in negotiations like Larry Luccino and Dennis Dowdle did).
We have to hear hours of discussion on things the city has no power over, like transgender issues in North Carolina, but the public can't hear one second about the HUGE cost overruns as they came up and we could have pulled the plug or altered the deal?!
57% mistakes usually get people fired. Instead they got more of our tax money.