Once again the mayor’s cheerleaders come out to brag about breaking another building permit record this year. I have often argued that we shouldn’t be counting public projects because that is an expenditure to taxpayers, and NOT and economic booster. For instance, the administration building will cost taxpayers $1 million a year in mortgage, in essence to solve a $100K lease payment we had. This is $1 million we are taking away from our road funds.
Just in the top 15 projects we had almost $28 million in public projects.
I think it should be broken down into 3 categories;
• Private for profit/housing, etc.
• Private non or not for profit (Hospitals for example)
• Public (City, County, School District, Higher education)
What do you think? Should public projects be included?
And there’s the building permits issued but retracted like the house at McKennon Park.