Kathi Masonheimer reported to the Brady City Council at their regular March 20 meeting about using Economic Development Corp (EDC) funds for the Civic Center and G. Rollie White Facility.
Sue Steelhammer was allowed two minutes to speak in the Citizen Comment period. Here are her comments and questions:
Brady’s Type A EDC may use sales tax monies to fund industrial and manufacturing projects that create or protect jobs such as the recent loan made to Ranne Trucking.
Other kinds of projects have to be approved by voters. In 2009, voters gave their approval to open-end EDC funding of improvements and repairs at the civic center and at the lake.
Then the EDC jumped on the MUDualistic bandwagon last August and inappropriately loaned over $54,000 to the ATV/RV project – one of those kinds of projects that needs voter approval. To cover itself, the EDC even claimed that the money was “left over” from lake improvements and that the project was a “lake amenity”!
To further complicate matters, in our December utility bills, the City claimed to have paid for many lake improvements out of the utility fund. Then in last week’s newspaper, the EDC’s latest claim to fame was that it spent $250,000 at the lake. And to think that some people say that numbers don’t lie!
In November, voters refused to approve the EDC becoming an MDD, largely because they wanted to keep their right to vote on projects like MUDualistic. Even though some interest in buying G. Rollie White has been expressed, now the EDC wants to spend $50,000 for a study of possible uses of the facility. Once again, unless the use is manufacturing or industrial, G. Rollie White is a project that needs to be approved by voters.
- What part of the loan-making requirements do the City and the EDC not understand?
- Why can’t the EDC and the City get their bookkeeping in order?
- And why do the City and the EDC continue to ignore the law by cutting the voters out of the decision-making process?