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.

Your excellent coverage of the TRAC meeting Tuesday night is what Larry Alexander, the reporter at the meeting for the Intelligencer Journal, should have written and didn’t. My question is, why didn’t he?

It was announced at Thursday’s meeting of the Convention Center Authority that Shelly Weikert, who has provided administrative support to the organization for nearly five years, is resigning.

Weikert indicated that, while multiple reasons are involved, she is relocating to Las Vegas because she enjoys the area and “I have a hospitality degree and it’s the hotel capital of the world.”

She relates that she first came to the Convention Center Authority in July of 2003 as a temporary assistant. In August of 2003, she was hired directly as an Executive Administrative Assistant, and transitioned to the role of an Executive Assistant in 2004.

Weikert will be retained over the next month on a contract basis to help the Authority deal with the departure.

As for the “fact-finding” mission Art Morris and R.B. Campbell were to undertake this week regarding the issue of naming rights, they relate that the meeting has been postponed indefinitely.

Said Campbell, “With all the developments that we have with personnel, it wasn’t critical we have the meeting right now.”

He went on to explain that Morris, as Acting Executive Director, “has a lot on his plate right now” and that, with the departure of Weikert, the Authority is finding itself increasingly strained.

Last August, the Rotary Club of Lancaster invited Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta to speak on the subject of his city’s crackdown on illegal immigrants.

It is said that Rotary gave him a standing ovation.

Today, they heard from someone who says that Mr. Barletta’s claims linking immigrants with increases in crime and burdens on social services, are unfounded.

Vic Walczak is the Legal Director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, a position he has held since 2004. He was co-counsel in the nationally noted 2005 challenge to the teaching of Intelligent Design in the Dover Area School District in York County. He also lead the charge against Hazleton’s anti-immigration ordinance in 2006.

He is also the son of a Polish Holocaust survivor and he experienced martial law in Poland when he traveled to Poland before attending law school at Boston University.

Prompted largely by the murder of Derek Kichline by two undocumented immigrants in May 2006, Mayor Barletta and the Hazleton City Council decided that immigrants as a group were causing a rise in crime and draining the city’s resources, Walczak explained.

But actual statistics do not bear out any such claim, he argued.

Over a 6-year period in Hazleton, 428 violent crimes were committed, Walczak related. “Four were committed by illegal immigrants.”

“Studies show that the vast majority of immigrants come to this country, they work hard, and that when you have a large influx of immigrants, crime actually goes down. First-generation immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than citizens,” he continued.

He also argued we should look back historically and realize that we’re not proud of certain eras which were characterized by hostility to other groups such as Catholics, Jews, Asian Americans, Italians, and others.

Walczak believes that the real impetus behind the anti-illegal immigration movement is “to demonize Latinos” and, unfortunately, “appearance and accent becomes a proxy.”

Mr. Walczak also gave his talk to a “Community Immigration Forum” hosted by the ACLU of Pennsylvania and other sponsoring organizations at Southern Market Center, Wednesday night.

At their weekly meeting this morning, the County Commissioners heard a brief presentation on the status of the renovations to the County office building at 150 North Queen Street.

Mike Myers, Operations Manager for KCI Technologies, the firm managing the construction, revealed that the targeted completion date for the project is June 2009.

The County has seen the price tag for the project increase a number of times and the projected cost is currently $48,396,242.

Commissioner Chairman Dennis Stuckey called the June 2009 target “surprising and disappointing” but indicated that things need to be done right, and that the largely inherited project must be seen through to completion.

The Commissioners publicly thanked all County employees for their patience and understanding during this time of transition.

Also Wednesday, Commissioner Stuckey announced that the weekly public meetings are now being recorded on video and that the County is considering making such video available on the County website.

“So, just to let you know, everything you say in this room is being recorded – even your conversation amongst yourselves, probably,” Stuckey eerily remarked.

In August of 2006, Mayor Rick Gray gave an interview to WGAL-TV in which he proclaimed “What we have done is close the funding gap” of $20 million. The “gap” had caused Penn Square Partners to announce that the convention center project was being aborted.

The interview is well worth watching.

Because most of the $20 million in so called savings turned out to be illusionary, the gap actually increased. Furthermore Gray projects $2 million in naming rights, which may have been a low estimate.

Gray claimed there would be $5.2 million “from negotiations with contractors,” but building costs actually went up.

Gray also indicated there would be $3 million in easement payments from the impecunious Historic Preservation Trust, which the Trust promptly denied.

Gray said there would be $7 million in savings for the parking garage, but the cost of the parking garage ended up being paid by the public and users rather than the Partners.

What is LCCCA Chair Art Morris thinking about when he questions whether there will be naming rights proceeds, especially given the more than $2 million being charged for naming rights in comparable other locations?

And why is Morris proposing to go hat-in-hand to seek “clarification” from Penn Square Partners when it is obvious that Penn Square Partners misled Gray about the gap being closed?

Penn Square Partners obtained one-sided clauses that mysteriously appeared in its contracts with the Authority, inappropriately diverting millions of dollars of taxpayer money to the hotel developer.

Morris should leave his hat at home and bring a bludgeon for a real negotiation.

As revealed by NewsLanc.com, almost half of the funding for Craig Lehman’s county commissioner campaign came from special interest groups that clearly had no direct stake in the Lehman campaign. It is reasonable to assume that they sent their checks on behalf of Senator Gibson Armstrong who is a prime mover behind the project. Representative Mike Sturla may also have helped solicit funds for Lehman.

There is nothing necessarily illegal about raising money in this way. However, the public can justly ask itself: what was promised in exchange? What benefits that otherwise may have flowed to Lancaster were lost?

And doesn’t this make Lehman beholding to the supporters of the Convention Center project and more likely to favor a County bail-out of the misbegotten project at a later date?

Furthermore, won’t such heavy handed intrusion of statewide lobbyists and players in a local campaign intimidate other elected and appointed officials from bucking the Power Elite and discourage potential candidates for elected and appointed offices?

I found it a little backwards that Columbia wants to put a highway on its waterfront. Granted the RR is already there, but quite a few RRs have gone to trails in the past decade.

To take a city’s beautiful asset and farther remove it from citizens just seems to be a huge mistake. The highway should be located anywhere but on the river front.

Thank you very much for the $10,000.00 pledge (LOL and the media hype) for renovations to Rodney Park. There are those of us who have been trying for years, to no avail, to get improvements to our park for our children. As you have recently seen, our area is rather economically depressed, however, our children deserve the advantages afforded to the children from other sections of Lancaster. My husband and I give more than our share of “sweat equity” for our neighborhood, particularly the children, and we get terribly frustrated that we cannot do more.

I think the following question goes against Newslanc’s proposed mission: “Is there a coincidence that soon after the funding was raised largely from Lancaster’s Power Elite that Darcus took over the helm of the LCCCA and rammed the project through despite considerable opposition and all logic?” Perhaps the piece would have been more appropriate under an “Editorial” heading.

I would also like to express my disagreement with the letter to the editor entitled “Congratulations.”

It is a stretch at best to insinuate a conflict of interest between Mr. Morris, an occasional columnist, and Lancaster Newspapers, or to suggest he ought to resign as board chair because of Mrs. Henderson’s lawsuit. The cynic in me is beginning to believe that she included Mr. Morris in her lawsuit in an effort to remove him from the board and wreak havoc with the project. Simply because she filed a lawsuit does not make her accusations true, and until such time it is heard and a judgment proves otherwise, Mr. Morris ought to remain in his current position. Lastly, he is the most qualified member of the board to serve as chair. I have attended meetings for a long time and have listened to Ms. Douglas, as well. She has a solid business background and certainly contributes to the board, however in my opinion, Mr. Morris is more qualified to hold the chair’s position based on his education, engineering and business backgrounds, public service experience, and knowledge of the culture of the city. He has an ability to teach the public and also hold those involved in the project (including board members) accountable for their work. He may not be doing what you want him to do, such as working to change the contracts or suing to change the contracts, but that does not make him ineffective.

As usual there is no name to the author of the LTE which keeps them secretly comfy cozy. As I have commented in the past, the credibility of Newslanc as a serious news source is minimized by your not printing contributors names. But I do find it entertaining and enjoy the “unbiased” reporting.