This week marks the one year anniversary of the sale of nearly $64 million dollars in convention center construction bonds. If these bonds are not refinanced, they should be paid off in March of the year 2047. I strongly suspect that most of us in this room today will not be here to witness that event.

Many of the members of the current board of the Lancaster County Convention Center Authority have been working diligently to force this project to fit into the constraints placed upon it by previous boards and previous executive directors. But make no mistake, you are tightly bound by the agreements that created and govern this project, sections of which clearly take unfair advantage of taxpayers and their hard-earned dollars.

I am sure that many of you have read the agreements by which you are bound; unfortunately, I am afraid that some of you may have not. I wonder how many of you would have agreed to serve on the LCCCA board if you had carefully read these agreements before you said “yes”.

I should not need to spell out to you the specific issues I am talking about. But let there be no doubt that as long as taxpayers are being unfairly taken advantage of by the agreements which bind this project, the convention center can never be a success. It doesn’t matter how “successful” the media and project promoters claim the project may become; the end cannot possibly justify the means.

I’m sure that every single one of you believes that you are serving on this board to the best of your abilities. But simply accepting the rape and pillage of taxpayers by a project which you are responsible for is nothing less than a failure in and of itself.