WEEKLY EDITORIAL RECAP
EXCUSE TO WASTE TAX DOLLARS
WEDNESDAY
Imagine some fast-talking developer offered to build you a new house practically identical to your existing house, but in a somewhat crummier neighborhood half a mile away. He'd sell you your new domicile for a modest $150,000 -- and pay you between $51,000 and $81,000 for the perfectly good house you're living in now. ...
At this point, you're free to declare this scheme completely bonkers. ... Yet multiply these numbers a thousandfold, and you've got the money-losing "new City Hall" deal the Las Vegas City Council will consider today -- despite the fact the city budget is currently stretched so tight they're cutting back hours at public recreation centers.
The plan calls for abandoning the current 276,000-square-foot City Hall -- built in 1973, still perfectly adequate, and likely to have surplus space if and when the Metropolitan Police Department moves to new quarters -- to build a new City Hall less than a mile to the southwest, at the site of the derelict Queen of Hearts casino on First Street between Lewis and Clark avenues. ...
No one claims the current City Hall is inadequate. No, this is all being sold as an "economic stimulus" for the downtown -- a relocation of the City Hall such a short distance from the current site that workers will still be able to walk to some of the same lunch spots they frequent today.
The suspicion begins to take root that someone stands to make a hefty profit off this deal, and it ain't the taxpayers. ...
