The promise for the hotel project not to require any tax money and the subsequent breaking of that promise reminds us of President George H.W. Bush’s ill-fated statement of “Read my lips: no new taxes.”
To bring along doubting members of the Pine Bluff City Council, the promise was made that no tax dollars would be used for the project to build a new hotel next to the Pine Bluff Convention Center.
In the same way that Bush ultimately signed bills that created more taxes — a move that he said ultimately led to his defeat to Bill Clinton for president — the city went to the piggy bank of tax dollars to get $2.9 million for the hotel project.
Those who supported the tax can hem and haw about the reasons for taking those tax dollars from the Urban Renewal Agency, but the key here is that they indeed took them.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Now, they are back. Because of this and that — again, do the reasons really matter? — the needy hotel project was in want of another $3 million. Combined with the other almost $3 million, the city will have pitched in close to $6 million or the equivalent of a quarter of what the $24 million facility is supposed to cost.
From zero to $6 million is quite a distance. But, hey, it’s just tax money so who cares, right? When the chips are down or you didn’t plan sufficiently enough to have a Plan B when the chips did go down, ka-ching, just grab some cash from the public trough.
And then there is a lack of transparency, also known as the Pine Bluff way. As Council Member Bruce Lockett put it, he is concerned because he was called to a joint committee on Monday to consider a plan for the city to borrow that $3 million for the hotel project and he said he had not heard a thing about the issue until about the time he showed up for the meeting. If there was true transparency, wouldn’t at least an elected city official know about the issue? And, really, shouldn’t the whole city have been apprised of what’s going on with the hotel? The reason being, residents will be paying back that money for a long, long time to come.
Lockett went on to say that he didn’t think the city should be in the business of operating a hotel, and in addition, he doubted that a 125-room hotel was going to generate a lot of tax for the city. Yes, well, that horse left the barn a long time ago when the city led the way in facilitating a hotel project in the first place.
When it comes to the project, we can’t help remembering Council Member Glen Brown Sr.’s words that he uttered last year: “I thought ‘OK, let someone else take the risk. So what is this $3 million? I guess you can just tell me a lie.'”
Yes, and they just keep on keepin’ on.