Just a few days after the conclusion of an election wherein Mayor Sly touted his work in promoting local education . . . Advocates for Kansas City students call out the rising price tag for the Downtown Convention Hotel Scheme.
Check it:
KSHB: Schools want to know why they have to pay for proposed Hyatt Hotel
Money line that pretty much explains the debate:
"The project's future tax revenue would go back to the hotel instead of divided between services it would normally go to like KCPS, Kansas City Public Library, the mental health fund and the blind pension fund."
Sadly, nothing about this project adds up and not even the best and brightest supporters of Mayor Sly have been able to explain the fuzzy math to locals.
Developing . . .
SYLVESTER JAMES SUMMER MATH CLASS
ReplyDeleteWelcome students! This is a remedial math for dummies course, for those of you who didn't pass the first time around. Now, looking around the room, I see a lot of intelligent logical thinkers who typically struggle with such concepts as giving away public tax dollars to support wealthy development investors.
If I can give you one piece of advice to help pass this course, it would be "just go with it!"......don't question or fight these schemes which initially appear to be lunacy....."just go with it!"
Everybody got it? Good! Repeat after me, "Just Go With It!!"
So what, if I initially said the city's expense for the convention center hotel was capped at $35 million, but now you know it's several times that.......JUST GO WITH IT!!
So what, if I've repeatedly stated that improving the public schools in KCMO is one of my top priorities, but this convention center hotel handicaps the public schools by not paying their taxes due......JUST GO WITH IT!!
So what, if I claim to operate in an open and transparent manner, but will try my best to subvert the democratic process by hurriedly ramming this hotel approval through before the new Council is sworn in......JUST GO WITH IT!!
So what, if the past track record for developer Robert Swerdling includes convention center hotel failures in Austin, Sacramento, Omaha, and Baltimore........JUST GO WITH IT!!
So what, if I've accepted campaign donations from many of those who stand to reap financial rewards from the convention center hotel......JUST GO WITH IT!!
So what, if people familiar with the industry say things like:
"Bruce Walker, the founder of the hotel consultant firm Source Strategies, agrees, saying that telling hard-luck cities that if they spend public money on convention center hotels, meeting planners will knock down their doors is tantamount to fraud. Or, you could wind up with a situation like Houston, where, since the 1,200-room city-owned Hilton opened in 2003, other downtown hotels reported significant drops in occupancy, forcing three into bankruptcy, according to Walker. It was "a monstrous blow," Walker says of the Hilton's impact on Houston's downtown hotel market."
"Heywood Sanders, a professor in Texas with a doctorate from Harvard, will talk anyone's ear off about that uncertainty and the "folly" of cities building hotels. He has published report after report on the "heartbreak" of watching money that could revitalize downtown areas or bolster visitors bureaus instead bailing out Hyatts or Sheratons.
"Look," says Sanders, a public administration professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio. "I don't relish the role of Official Cold Water Thrower. It's just that I have a long list of cities where this doesn't work.
In his much-quoted report last winter about the bloated state of the convention industry for the Brookings Institution, Sanders compared the actual performance of convention centers and their counterpart hotels with how consultants predicted they would do.
In nearly every case, he found gaps. Sanders argues that the convention center expansion craze sweeping the nation, combined with a shriveling meetings industry, defies the conclusion that pouring money into the conventions game is an effective economic development tool."
..........JUST GO WITH IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Might be a very rewarding talk at the Public Library about the FOLLY of building for conventions.
ReplyDeleteI just wish that the guys in KC who know what we need would make a list so we could see how far down the list we have come in achieving the position of FIRST CLASS CITY.
For 25 years the same litany over and over "If we would just _____________ (fill in the blank)we would be happy and wealthy and FIRST CLASS and a DESTINATION CITY.
Elected representatives and the public can both be bribed or threatened into compliance, but when the promises of endless debt-based swag for all fade, it's the people who bear the consequences, not the politicos.
ReplyDeleteWait till the Convention Hotel steals current business from existing hotels, and those hotels get their properties' appraised value reduced. All the public entities: school district, library, county and city will have their tax revenue reduced.
ReplyDeleteWhere is that financial analysis of this scam??
" Schools want to know why they have to pay for proposed Hyatt Hotel"
ReplyDeleteFirst of all it isn't the school's money. Second, I want to know why I, a single person who chose not to have kids, must pay for kid's meals, schools, medical care, athletic uniforms, computers and that whole pile of junk and shit I am buying so much of that I can't afford to buy my own. Fucking hell people. When are you copulating system milkers gonna start picking up the tab for raising your own little bastards? How do I benefit from the little sonzabitches walking over my lawn, shooting firecrackers, running up and down the streets making racket and dropping beer cans in my yard when they skip school? Jesus you get a fucking tax deduction for bringing the little deamons into the world. How much is enough ya moochers? And you think there is a marriage penalty? Fuck that! Try getting the bill for all these fucking kids that aren't yours.
Spay and neuter: It's not just for pets any more.
ReplyDelete@5:51 Thanks for making my day.
ReplyDelete5:51, my kids payroll deductions will be going straight into your checking account via social security payments, and don't tell me you are getting back what you paid in, it is going out as fast as it goes in, that is how a shell game works.
ReplyDelete