I found this statement about Events Center funding ‘interesting’
Turbak said Monday the city soon will finish paying off other bonds, which would free up revenue to pay off the bonds for an events center. That means other programs and projects won’t be sacrificed for the events center.
You mean like transferring the Lewis & Clark bond over to water rates and out of 2nd penny CIP revenue? Oh and those pesky campaign promises. Notice during the campaign he promised
• Not to add on to Convention Center
• Pay for it with Entertainment taxes, user fees, private donors and parking and rental fees. No mention of bonding (click on image to expand).
Accounting that’s needed is to cut off the city’s water on the events center and stop city employee wealthfare. The finance director was hired because he’d divert funds into Huether projects and (eventually) into Huether’s and his $500K campaign contributor developer’s pockets.
It’s not Mike’s fault! It’s those pesky private contributors (a la Billion and Nyberg) who took their ball home and won’t play along with His Leadership!
Incidentally, I think “His Leadership” is the perfect title for Mayor Mike, as in, “I live but to serve you, your leadership!”
Let’s be real, even if he had picked downtown neither of them would have tossed much money into it.
The Mayor also claimed during the early EC meetings that he had no plan, only a vision.
Turns out he had a very detailed plan that included conceptual designs from Populous. As he told the AL he never for a second considered the downtown site even though once again it came out that he campaigned in favor of a downtown facility (convention vs. event depending on who you believe) to at least 3 downtown merchants.
I guess this is what you get when you elect a guy who got where he is thanks to people not reading (or caring about) the fine print.
BTW, it’s also worth noting that apart from tearing down Howard Wood and paying for the construction via a sales tax this is the same plan Costello & Brown voted for that Huether bashed them repeatedly on.
I think it is funny how everyone ate Huether’s CC shit sandwich proposal during the campaign because Kermit was the Devil. Now, including yourself Sy, I finding out what a former crooked CC marketing manager is all about. I have said this a 1000 times, and I will say it again. Kermit is the most compassionate, intelligent, and honest person I have ever met. His honesty is amazing. He publicly backed Measure 13 for godsakes! A man who doesn’t drink, and probably never tried Mary Jane. He looks at the facts and bases his decision on that. He also knows what the 1st Amendment means. I told voters what kind of mayor Huether would be, and I think I broke my Magic 8-Ball 🙂 the voters get what they deserve. It’s too bad I have to watch all this.
I totally agree with your comments on Kermit.
and like I said back during the campaign; Kermit may be all those things but he was absolutely tone deaf to the fact that he needed to reach out to Brown, Costello & Peterson voters (ie Republicans and conservative Democrats) He did nothing to go there other than remind people he was the Republican in the race.
HisMan has made his bed, take a read of this article in the AL & it’s comment section:
http://www.argusleader.com/article/20110629/NEWS/106290329/Mayor-Events-center-issue-won-t-go-away-defeated-by-voters
Sy – We have discussed this in the past. Brown, Costello and Peterson were going to endorse Kermit. But they agreed to have some fucking stupid 3 Musketeer bullshit reason behind it. Brown and Costello said they would, but Peterson would not, so they all backed out. Bill is a tool who helped to create HOME RULE. Not only am I glad he lost, I’m glad he only beat Janoct. He thought he would win on his arrogance alone, silly, silly, silly man. Kermit busted his ass trying to get endorsements, but it was always, “I’m pushing for you behind the scenes (Munson). Like I said above, we get what we deserved, a mayor that is more concerned about the size of his tennis racket then what is best for the people. You act so god damn surprised the EC debate has turned into a shit pie, well when you have a king shit preparing it, what do you expect?