Jack’s Round-up
By: Mr. Wilson on
October 15, 2009
The final component in that formula is state aid, which will come from the turnback tax, which allows the state sales tax on all new hotel/motel rooms within 450 yards of the arena to be turned back to the city over the course of 25 years. The city will be counting on collections of about $25 million dollars from state aid, and they will back it up with a general obligation bond. That’s where we, the voters, come into play. That bond needs to be authorized by a vote of the citizens. The people I’ve talked to associated with the project and in the city’s finance department are very confident that bond can be retired in short order with only the turnback tax, but if there were problems, the city would have to come up with the money to repay that bond in full. Again, everyone involved seems to be very confident that won’t be a problem.This confidence is exactly the sort of thing Lincoln's voters need to ask questions about as we move forward. Lots and lots of questions. "It won't be a problem" isn't good enough. We need to demand plenty of hard data, optimistic and worst-case projections, and so on. We need to be sure we won't find ourselves in a heap of trouble if, say, we happen to go through another recession or two while we're trying to pay off the arena. To be clear, I'm not saying Dan Marvin should have included all that data in his presentation. You don't want to put people to sleep at a luncheon. We just need to be certain that at some point these answers are put on paper.
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