From the WALL STREET JOURNAL:
For two decades, America’s convention center business has been declining, resulting in a nationwide surplus of empty meeting facilities, struggling convention halls and vacant hotel rooms. How have governments responded to this glut? By building more convention centers, of course, financed by debt backed by new taxes and fees on already struggling taxpayers.
Back in 2007, before the recession began, a report from Destination Marketing Association International described America’s convention industry as a “buyer’s market” suffering excess capacity. It’s only gotten worse, attracting just 86 million attendees in 2010, compared to 126 million in 2000. Meanwhile, the amount of convention space angling for business has increased to 70 million square feet, up from 53 million in 2000 and 40 million two decades ago.
That’s largely because governments refuse to stop making convention centers bigger and hotels even more dazzling, arguing that whatever business remains will flow to the places with the fanciest amenities. To finance these risky projects—which the private sector won’t build by itself—cities float debt backed by new taxes and fees on already struggling taxpayers. As Charles Chieppo, a former board member of Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, lamented last year, “Logic rarely has a place in the convention business.”
Click here to read the full article.
“Logic rarely has a place” when it comes to PSP, the Lancaster “power brokers’, and those that cater to their every whim.
This city is but a shell of what it once was, and the shell is broken, much like Humpty Dumpty. All the Kings’ (LNP and S. Dale High, Mayor Rick, Gib Armstrong et al) Horses and all the Kings’ Men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty back to gether again.
Lancaster will never returm to the white middle-class city that it once was, despite the efforts of those who wish it could.
“Lancaster will never return to the white middle-class city that it once was. . . .”
What we need in Lancaster is a growing middle class . . of every color!
If we believe that that the pie is one size and we are all fighting for a piece of it (or a larger and better piece of it), we get the broken, Humpty Dumpty cities that we have today. It does not have to be that way. A single starting point would be giving everyone a job . . . . a real job, with a living wage, and, a living wage for any job that needs to be done!
Let’s try that for the next 100 years, then take a look at our cities; Is the tax base improved, are the schools better, are more students better educated, is housing improved, are streets cleaner, more cultural opportunities available, better health care, less crime, less fear of each other?
People with money like to say that money is not everything, but in a money economy, money is the only way to feed families, to shelter families, to maintain schools, build and sustain community infrastructures, to provide recreation and cultural opportunities, even to build and maintain churches . . . it takes money. We certainly do not need an excess but we do need sufficiency, meaning family financial sustainability for all families, no matter if we are working at Burger King or Armstrong. (Is feeding people less important that making ceilings or floors?) A “living wage”; some believe is an impossible ideal, but it is not. If we want to, we can do it. If we want to.