LETTER: CC staff essential to protect tax payers
There is quite a bit more to this issue than meets the eye. The ONLY people that serve to protect us taxpayers from the Penn Square Partners are the LCCCA Finance Committee, Mary Ellen Davis, and Kevin Molloy. The LCCCA Finance Committee meets once a month, where it hears a presentation from Interstate Hotels and Resorts, the joint manager of the “integrated facility”. Members of the LCCCA Finance committee can – and do – question the numbers provided by IHR, but they often don’t have all of the background.
Mary Ellen Davis spends quite a bit of her time monitoring the expenditure of taxpayer dollars by Interstate Hotels and Resorts, in addition to her other duties. From the information she presents at LCCCA meetings, it is obvious that she is carrying a heavy work load.
Kevin Molloy is the ONLY person available full-time to keep tabs on IHR and the PSP. Kevin does not assume ANYTHING, and keeps a close eye on IHR’s operation of the convention center. Without someone of Kevin Molloy’s abilities, there would be numerous opportunities for the Penn Square Partners to take even more money from taxpayers than they do right now.
The other thing that Kevin Molloy does is go on sales calls with reps from Interstate Hotels and Resorts, and from the Pennsylvania Dutch Convention and Visitors Bureau. IHR manages both the hotel and the convention center, so they have no incentive to drive business toward the taxpayer-controlled meeting rooms (already there appear to be more small meetings in the hotel’s part of the facility, allowing the PSP to collect more meeting revenue than the LCCCA). Kevin Molloy is the ONLY individual who is in a position to advocate the convention center during a sales meeting.
My concern about this project all along has been its cost to taxpayers. Kevin Molloy and Mary Ellen Davis are the only two people employed full-time in this facility who work to protect the interests of taxpayers like us.
Good information to know…..at least someone is watching the hen house!!
Approx. $200,000 a year is just a lot of money to be spending to oversee a third of an operation that is losing a million or so a year and not doing the business it was intended to do.
This term “taxpayers” is used with such ambiguity. Local taxpayers have paid nothing directly. There are the state taxpayers and there’s the hotel tax. That’s it.
I am SICK and TIRED of the convention center supporters trotting out the ‘local taxpayers pay nothing’ as though the tax dollars spent on this dog a project do not have an diminishing effect. Where do you think the MILLIONS of dollars of state money is coming from – a money tree?!?!
Besides, those tax dollars WASTED on this project are tax dollars that could have gone for any number of better projects or left in the pockets of those paying it.
Lancaster County is known for being a cheap vacation and those coming here are counting pennies. Those taxes taken from them are dollars that they would have to spend on businesses throughout the county. This is basic economy 101! But project cheerleaders clearly do not understand how to run a business, a government or economic principles.