The LEDC has now concluded their business for 2023, since they never meet in December. What have they accomplished this year? Let’s take a look.
Business Park: still empty.
Next May will mark the TWENTY YEAR anniversary of when the LEDC decided to embark upon this disastrous adventure at the urgings of Angelou Economics (you can learn about that HERE):
They borrowed $1.1 MILLION (over TWO million in today’s dollars) at a hefty 7% – for what is now STILL a giant empty “goat pasture” (former City council member Mike White’s words, not mine). The only excitement that has happened over there was when a murderer dumped a corpse there in July of 2019.
Well over seven million dollars has been wasted thus far.
Last January (almost a year ago now) Finley hired Stacey Ybarra as the new Economic Development Director. She was hired on at a very generous $85,000 per year (quickly raised to $89,280 after less than nine months on the job) – which is $10,000 MORE than the person she replaced (Mandy Walsh) who had been there FIVE years and had a lot more experience than Ybarra.
Ybarra promised last January that getting tenants for the Business Pork Project was her “number-one priority.” After that, she posted a lot of phantom jobs and “projects awarded” which were subsequently erased from history when I started asking for specifics.
[Oh, and the City’s hack attorney JC Brown billed the taxpayer lots of hours to keep the charade a secret from me. Money well spent!]
Eventually City council grilled her hard on what the hell was going on over there! She did a lot of stammering and sputtering, but the eventual answer turned out to be: absolutely nothing.
NOW, Ybarra and the LEDC are “rewriting” the LEDC incentives plan and the “strategic plan” AGAIN (third or fourth time now…I’ve lost count).
Bottom line? Don’t expect any miracle “high paying jobs” to show up at the Business Pork Project any time soon.
SUMMARY:
Business Park expenses: over $7,200,000.00
Jobs created: 0
Days park has been empty: 7,155
