North Port is spending while city is bleeding
Let’s start with Warm Mineral Springs, the health spa/archaeological tourist attraction the city commissioners decided to buy for $6.3 million.
Buying the springs to protect it from private development and protect public access makes sense, but the deal approved Monday would place it in private hands for the next 30 years, which isn’t exactly the same as outright ownership. A lease that long is asking for trouble.
The city has also left in the lurch a willing co-buyer in Sarasota County, which has the money and staff to manage the property. That could save more than $3 million just in the purchase price, but who’s counting?
Apparently no one, or the commissioners wouldn’t be mulling plans to build a regional water park. Cost: $22 million.
Yes, it’s hot in the summer, but a water park definitely falls in the wants, not needs, category. It would also likely be a yearly drain on the city budget because these things rarely pay for themselves.
City Commissioner Vanessa Carusone once said she’d find money for the project if she had to walk door-to-door asking everyone for a dollar. North Port has about 50,000 residents, so she’d actually have to ask everyone for as much as $440. But who’s counting?
Then there’s the latest. The city is preparing to sign a $450,000 contract with a company called Big League Dreams.
For $4.5 million, the company would build fields for youth baseball leagues and college tournaments; and for $15 million, they would build replicas of major league parks, such as Fenway or Wrigley. The city would pay for everything, of course, including the land.
Build it and they will come, Commissioner Mike Treubert intoned, using the famous line based not on reality but from the 1989 fantasy movie, “Field of Dreams.”
California-based Big League Dreams has developed 10 complexes in 13 years, returning $11 million to the cities that invested in it. Let’s say the cost averaged $10 million. That means for every $1 invested, the company has returned 11 cents. But who’s counting?
Someone better start.
North Port can’t even pay its employees, at least its non-union ones. Next year’s budget calls for a mandatory 12 days off, unpaid, for city workers. Its reserves, $27 million four years ago, have dropped to $6 million. Without tax increases, pay cuts, layoffs or a dramatic rise in property values, the city will be $5 million in the red by 2012.
Here’s the kicker: On Monday, the city commission opted to ask voters this fall to approve $84 million in bonds to, among other things, pay for the water park.
Maybe it won’t go too far. Bond issuers generally want to ensure that their recipients have the financial resources to make payments.
Eric Ernst‘s column runs Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Contact him at eric.ernst@heraldtribune.com or (941) 486-3073.
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