City Council Approves Civic Field Bond Measure
The Port Angeles City Council voted to place a $4 million bond measure, for improvements to Civic Field, on the August 7th ballot. The City Council vote was unanimous.
It's a 20-year bond which will end up costing $5.5 million after interest has been calculated. At least sixty percent of the voters will have to vote Yes in order for the bond to pass.
It's a 20-year bond which will end up costing $5.5 million after interest has been calculated. At least sixty percent of the voters will have to vote Yes in order for the bond to pass.
posted by Tom Harper at 5:31 PM
17 Comments:
Never been in the joint, but I am an old fart that would have no reason to go there.
Hi everyone! I work at the Astro-Turf (tm) factory located in the "outskirts" of Fredricksburg, Tx. From everyone in our community, thank you!
Did you know, btw, that this stuff makes a fine surface for golf courses? It requires absolutely no water, and varmits HATE it!
We do have a few front yards installed in Sequim, check them out!
Good for them. This is something that should go to the voters rather than be decided in council.
Why be prudent with the resources you already have, when you can convince residents to tax themselves more with "levies".
" Oh, we don't have any more money to pay for paving streets, or maintaining our kids playing fields because we've wasted your money giving it to our friends at the Chanber, the consultants, and all kinds of waterfront beautification projects. If you want the basics a town depends upon, tax yourelves some more, or else."
can't afford more levies, can't afford more bonds, can't afford more taxes...unless the county wants to reassess my property to some REAL valuation. Right now it's about 4x what I could get for it, on a good day. Insanity rules.
Every town needs a facility such as that I suppose but building, maintaining, and improving them sure is expensive these days.
Why don't they do like we did the playground across the street? Raise money for the materials and then a bunch of us volunteers built it.
Fred Hill files for bankruptcy. Hmmm.
Citizens should not hve to be taxed to pay for Civic Field improvements. This is the type of civic improvement project that should be paid-for with the $7.5 million "graving dock" settlement. That money was placed in the City's Economic Development Fund back in 2006 or 2007,and thus far has been spent to pay for part of the Gateway construction overages, and on the Waterfront Improvement program's designs for pretty sidewalks and new "wayfinding" signs. Despite the extravagant and wasteful spending thus far, there's still some serious money left from the original $7.5 million to pay for improving Civic Field. Yet I haven't heard a peep from anybody on the Council about doing this instead of imposing more taxes on the public through bonded debt.
Why are our "civic leaders" trying to bleed more money from the taxpayers rather than look for ways to more wisely allocate existing funds?
I hope that this bond measure goes down in flames, and forces the City Council to actually budget for things like basic maintenance and infrastructure. They need to be broken of the habit of simply growing the budget and the bond debt every year. If I recall correctly, that "tax and spend" so-called liberal Max Mania has been the only Council member to consistently vote against bigger budgets and more bond debt. The so-called "conservatives" like Brooke Nelson and Dan DiGuilio just vote yes to every budget, and every spending request staff or the PADA or the Chamber makes. Up is down, black is white.
"Why are our "civic leaders" trying to bleed more money from the taxpayers rather than look for ways to more wisely allocate existing funds?"
Not to sound nasty or anything, but : "You just don't get it, do you!!"
The City has a relatively fixed budget. It used to include paying for the "basics" like paving streets, libraries, police services and maintaining public spaces like parks, civic centers, etc. This was the case throughout North America. The government collected taxes to pay for things for the general public good.
A few years ago, a few political folks in Port Angeles figured out that they could just say the City had no more money to pay for, say, maintaining the public pool that all the local school kids liked to use, and stated that either the local residents coughed up MORE money to continue the pool operations, or the City would shut it down.
Resident taxes did not decrease once they voted to allow the "levie". The taxes once used to pay for pool operations were then freed to pay for other City projects.
Can you now understand why we have all these "levies"?
Why should the tax payers that live within the City foot the bill for this project? Don’t the schools use this field too? Don’t people who live outside of town use this field too?
I really am starting to think that all these grants and bonds and levies are slight-of-hand to obscure the reality that our city is insolvent. Too many years of overspending on silly projects, giving it (or nearly so) to certain supposed "civic leaders" hired to steer special projects with lofty sounding titles, tax breaks to a few, and other shenanigans has taken a toll on any concept of healthy control of the finances. There are houses built in the city that have never paid taxes because they were grandfathered in. There are still properties that are at 1/10th of what would be considered a "normal" tax bracket, and not in line, at all, with comparable properties. The truth is, this town needs to take a long, hard look at what other screwy finance habits and lazy accounting methods are part of the city culture. WE should wake up. We have, in the recent past, have had one person who embezzled, and one who followed vague rules (and then was chastised for doing so). It seems that business as usual in our city government is all monkey business. (I'm sure Billy would agree.)
@ Anon 9:41.
I agree, and I'm not Billy!
Anon 9:41 ---
Well said. If only we had a state auditor or some other investigative body with the political will and follow-up clout to really dig into this and clean house.
Fearless investigative Journalism could do wonders to expose this, too.
doesn't our esteemed city destroy records and circle the wagons so that the auditor can't quite get a foothold? I seem to remember the state auditor sniffing around a couple of years ago regarding some former council member/mayor who seems to have her little pinkies into everyone's pocket. The problem? Lack of records, lack of people willing to talk, and all that could be gleaned from the well picked bones was "appearances of impropriety". PDN's lips were stapled shut, of course.
"Political corruption may be defined as bribery, graft, extortion, robbery, patronage, nepotism, cronyism, conflict of interest and kickbacks."
This town doesn't release any information on contracts, audits, or lobbying. So, unless the public is given access to these records, there is no way we can ever know what bribery, graft, extortion, nepotism, cronyism, conflict of interest or kickbacks are taking place.
http://sunshinereview.org/index.php/Port_Angeles,_Washington#cite_note-4
They don't even have to TRY to hide any questionable actions. No one is even looking!
I've seen numerous situations where the city staff presents conflicting information to support a project that was pre-determined for "approval", and NOBODY, including the "state oversight agencies" cared. This information, if actually considered for what it stated, would have shown the multimillion dollar proposal was a waste of time and money.
The city staff can say the sky is green and dogs give birth to fish, and nobody would care.
And the PDN? Just a bunch of boosters for the city. They don't "investigate" anything except those that question the status quo.
Post a Comment
<< Home