Posted on 09/20/2012 7:00:45 PM PDT by MichCapCon
Eight years after the city of Pontiac spent $8 million renovating a theater that city officials say never reopened, the city sold it to a developer for $135,000.
Pontiac Emergency Manager Louis Schimmel said the deal is expected to be completed within two weeks.
City documents show the theater, which was sold as part of the city’s plan to cut expenses, was projected to cost the city about $135,000 in 2012-13. The theater opened in 1921 and has been owned by the city since 1986. The sale price of $135,000 was more than the appraised value of the theater, said Joseph Sobota, the city's director of the Department of Community Development.
A 2004 city of Pontiac financial report said $10 million was planned on renovating the theater. Sobota said the renovations cost $8 million.
Schimmel, who was appointed as the city's emergency financial manager in September 2011, said he saw the theater recently and couldn't see much of a benefit for the millions that were spent on renovations.
"It doesn't look like they spent $100,000, let alone $8 million," Schimmel said. "How the money was spent was hard to see."
Leon Drolet, chairman of the Michigan Taxpayers Alliance, said there should be an investigation into how the $8 million was spent.
"If this happened in your house, if you paid millions of dollars on upgrades you couldn't find, you would be suing the renovator," Drolet said. "The problem is there is no one who does that when government is involved. There is no accountability when government rips you off. No one is evaluated or held accountable for wasted funds. The only show that keeps going on is the rip off of taxpayers. That is the show that never closes."
Will that bring down property taxes there?
By statist arithmetic they made $2 million on deal.
This is like the fall of the Soviet Union where the KGB insiders wound up owning all of the assets.
Saved the taxpayers 2 million!!!
Yes. $2,135,000! Aren't they fiscal geniuses!
The problem here is that they built something that could not sustain a profit or put people into the seats on a regular basis.
Around two decades in Koln, Germany...the city got its hands onto a major property in the middle of town, and wanted to build a opera house/convention center. The federal gov’t there was going to fund a major part of this. Early on, they brought in a business analyst to do a full report on “impact”. He did the report and it was filed, but no one read the report...where he admitted it’d never pay for it’s monthly operational costs or be used more than six days a month max. So the funds come in...they build complex...and around four years after completion, they are having trouble sustaining just the regular operating cost. Someone pulls out the original report and is shocked that this was accurately predicted but never stopped the construction.
The problem here is that tax revenue is just sitting there and people’s attitudes are to spend it on something...rather than let someone else get it and spend on something else.
That is what they call money laundering.
someone walked with a lot of cash
I complained about the crap they were building our city and a local politicain had the nerve to tell me it was all free money ..grants...Have to spend it fast he said. We now have big planters blocking the streats of a dead downtown area with chainsaw carved chickens in them . Millions wasted ...50 thousan max would have covered it. I think it was called the main street program or something like that. Huge waste of tax dollars.
Every hair brained idea is being sold as an economic development tool. They have gotten this idea into their heads that there is a pool of business people cruising around looking for a cool place to build a factory and headquarters and they want to see a vibrant arts scene. And if they see it they will invest in that community.
Well there is a shrinking pool of people looking to build factories and an unlimited supply of localities with empty arts venues.
Impressive.
I can totally believe it.
Liberals think having government spend money helps the economy, even if it is spent as illogically and inefficient as this.
Isn’t this the same place with the parking garage fiasco?
Democrats - Thieves, Thugs, Thralls and Thickheads
They have to be elected so they can loot the public treasury.
And the old media keeps telling us, “We didn’t kill those people and steal that money! We just covered for those other Democrats that killed those people and stole that money. We just got a cut of the loot.”
Perhaps the "Friends of the Pontiac Theatre" or some such group that originally lobbied the city to fund this boondoggle?
Just think of the cronies who got the contracts on this renovation and the end game cronie who made the buy of all times...win/win for everybody but what few tax payers are left in MI.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.