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Mayor: Discuss the issues, TennantGood grief, let’s lift the level of decorum and generate some real discussion on the issues. A good place to start is Dan Tennant’s view to sell the tennis center. Selling city (taxpayer) assets to pay for someone else’s illegal debt is a disturbing thought to begin with and should never happen but let’s take a look. First of all, every homeowner in Planterra Ridge had an impact fee withdrawn from the sale of their home and was promised a tennis facility at the northern end of their subdivision. The impact fee was a legal, legitimate charge to those citizens so we have to ask, “Dan should we give the Planterra homeowners back their $500,000 too?” Where do you draw the line. Second, it was then-Councilman Tennant that refused to listen to the public advice from many of us and insisted upon building the $2.5 million Tennis Center expansion with our tax dollars (Note: The city has paid all of the agreed upon costs for the expansion and none of the $1.5 million illegal debt was used for that project). Finally, what Mr. Tennant is asking is that we sell the entire tennis facility with the city losing $1.5 million to pay an autonomous legal entity’s debt and still having to pay the $2.5 million “bricks and mortar” loan for the facility costing the local taxpayers a total of $4 million with absolutely nothing to show for it. Most such private tennis facilities fail. If it did fail, do we then have to buy it back and pay for it again? It is also important to note from the beginning of 2002 to the middle of 2003 that then-Councilman Tennant and then-Councilwoman McMenamen opposed every vote that Councilman Weed and Mayor Brown brought forward to end the illegal lending practices of the Development Authority (Councilman Rapson had to abstain from voting). During that period then-Councilman Tennant allowed the authority’s debt to balloon from $600,000 in 2001 to $1.5 million in 2003. His stalling accounted for an additional $900,000 in illegal debt. The additional debt that he allowed is more than we could get for the tennis center. The land is worth a lot more for use as a commercial site, is that what Dan Tennant wants to do? Go to www.MayorSteve.com and take a serious look at the issues. However, let me give credit where credit is due. Dar Thompson: “There are a couple of candidates that have stated, through their financial expertise, they can cut the budget up to $1.5 million. However, when asked, they can’t tell you where they will cut or how they will cut. They don’t have the first idea. They don’t even have a plan and haven’t presented one to date. Why? They simply don’t know.” Thompson’s remarks from his October 26, 2005 essay in The Citizen are correct. Tennant, Logsdon and Boswell are throwing numbers around like a bunch game show hosts. We are all waiting for them to tell us that we can win a “new car!” if we just vote for them. Where is their plan with actual numbers from a city budget on it? Interestingly, the city recently held four public hearings on the FY 2006 budget and none of the candidates offered any relevant suggestions on how to improve the budget. They all had access to the data, but they sat in silence. Candidate Boswell made the only remarks. He stated that we should hold off on replacing two aging dump trucks in our Public Works Department (Note: Public Works cannot function without dump trucks). Boswell also complained about a roundabout project that is in the proposed FY 2008 budget and had little relevance to the discussion. Mayor Steve Brown's blog | login to post comments
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