Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Augusta, GA
By
Kurt Huttar
Here
we go. It is now official. As my Augusta Today colleagues and fellow
CityStink.net contributors, Lori Davis, Brad Owens and Al Gray have
been saying for months, the Augusta
Tee/Convention/Conference/Whatever-it-is- called-next-week is a
TEETOTAL DISASTER. Yesterday the projected LOSSES came out for this
already-extinct dinosaur -
$911,000 plus in losses!
Since
only $250,000 is going to be available from the dedicated funding
source of the hotel transportation tax, Augusta Administrator Fred
Russell has had to admit that the balance of the funding for this
enormous albatross on city taxpayers will have to come out of the
General Fund. One supposes that fire and police protection will take
another hit.
Of
course, accompanying the
news of this debacle the
Augusta Chronicle, who shares ownership with erstwhile TEE manager
Augusta Riverfront LLC, trotted out the usual wildly optimistic
tourism revenue growth propaganda. “As
(Augusta Riverfront's Paul S.) Simon and Augusta Convention and
Visitors Bureau officials have said, the benefits to the city don’t
come from revenue from the center but from visitor spending. Simon’s
report includes a CVB (Convention and Visitors Bureau) chart
estimating $8.7 million in visitor spending in the first year from 13
conventions.”
This
statement rang a bell from a July 8, 2007 propaganda piece that Barry
White, Director of the CVB, had published in the Chronicle. White
wrote at the time: “Not
only does Augusta Riverfront LLC bring proven expertise, it has
offered to donate to the city downtown real estate valued at an
estimated $1 million. The
LLC also will pay annual center operating expenses over $250,000 and
capital improvements over $100,000 a year.”
Wow!
How
much more wrong can a bureaucrat be? The deal went from the LLC
funding $350,000 a year being reported in Mr. Simon's former
newspaper to Augusta's losses being capped at $350,000 annually a
month later – an amazing $700,000 swing against Augusta taxpayers
in one month! This looks like the first bait-and-switch. Now we have
the second. Now the losses to Augusta are nearly $1 million!!
Who
can believe anything coming out of CVB now? The free land had $7
millions in liens on it and now the city will lose millions instead
of getting millions in contributions from its “partners.”
The
2007 Barry White piece in the Chronicle also reminds one of another
little white lie that TEE Center supporters hawk – that the voters
of Augusta approved the TEE Center in 2005. What they never bring up
is that the voters approved this boondoggle after being told it would
cost 'only' $20 million. Now the cost is over $50 million ($tens of
millions more taking into account the existing Conference Center) and
it looks like the operating losses for the first decade will easily
exceed $20 million. Bear in mind that none of the projected losses
include depreciation or debt service!
Little
white lies got one huge white elephant constructed on Reynolds
Street.
Reality
trumps slanted projections and you can't use "White Out", either.
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