Et tu, Bob? Et tu?
I guess Goodart’s new nickname is “Brutus” – after the infamous traitor Marcus Junius Brutus.
Bob joined the crowd a few days ago as City council voted unanimously to pilfer $971,196 from City funds to waste on their goat pasture ‘business’ park debacle.
Bob sang a different tune when he was running for City council and I asked him DIRECTLY about this disaster of a project. Here is a copy of his email to me then in November of 2020:
“The business park has been a colossal waste of money to this point. The citizens of Lampasas voted to not buy the property, but then the City Manager, Mike Talbot managed to purchase the property through the Lampasas Economic Development Corporation, which is funded by the City of Lampasas.”
“The park sat for years until the decision was made to bring utilities to the park, to entice businesses. The cost to taxpayers was over 1 million dollars to bring water, sewer and electric to the property. Those utilities have sat idle for at least 5 or 6 [actually 7, now] years. I have now heard there is a plan in the works to build roads inside the park to attract business. So millions more will be spent to sit idly by until when?”
The return on investment on this property will be measured in decades instead of years at best. The best way I know to recoup any money out of this deal would be to sell it to a developer for a housing development, but the City will still lose money on it. No major business wants to build here because we are too far from the interstate, we don’t have a rail head, we don’t have the workforce to sustain it and we don’t have the things that are attractive to those businesses, such as hotels and restaurants and housing. It is my opinion it should be sold to recoup some of the money or at the very least, stop throwing money into it, until there is a firm commitment from a major business to come there.