Columnist Jeff Hawkes asks rhetorically: “Why is it that, financially speaking, Lancaster city is on the ropes?
“Well, that’s easy to answer. The city’s stagnant tax base can’t keep up with the costly demand for police and other services.
“No, wait. It’s because absentee landlords turned single-family homes into multiunit apartments that fell into disrepair and ran down neighborhoods.
“Hold on. Maybe it’s because the rising tide of poverty has overwhelmed schools with social problems that impede education, increase costs and burden property taxpayers.
“But there’s also the lure of the suburbs to middle-class families wanting a rancher with a two-car garage and to shoppers wanting free parking and weather-free shopping.” …
WATCHDOG:
Just off the top of the Watchdog’s head (which has little else there), let us add the following:
The construction of Lancaster Square with a Hilton Hotel and a Hess Department Store, neither of which proved feasible and were gone within a few years, with Bulova taking over the store which now stands empty, and the Brunswick limping along under different managements and a recent overhaul. Meanwhile the mayor is not willing to forgive the Brunswick owners for the wrongs the city has done to them.
The building of the extravagant and thus impractical Pennsylvania Academy of Music which has consumed, all things considered, about $25 mllion in tax payer money, taking into consideration the recent bail out of UNCB Bank and guarantors at a somewhat mysterious price by Millersville University.
The county guarantee of a Convention Center despite 78% opposition by those with an opinion, and the one sided deal with Penn Square Partners whereby the city taxpayers take the risk and PSP, if things go well, get to own the Marriott Hotel, free and clear of the current financing.
The most popular downtown attraction, the Lancaster Public Library with almost 1500 visitors a day, gets shorted a promised $3,000,000 in order to cover Convention Center extras, just as the library was ready to move ahead to double its size and thoroughly renovate.
City government that is satisfied with the crumbs that fall from the horn of cornucopia of public charity Lancaster General Health, too timid to ask that a more reasonable amount of hospital grants be made available to defray city, public health, school district and social safety net programs. (Meanwhile, the top nine executives at LGH had their basic salaries increased by half in 2008.)
Distorted initiatives that favor building a useless trolley system and doesn’t understand the great potential for preserving the Pennsylvania Academy of Music and nurturing its growth into a Brunswick centered campus.
We welcome contributors adding to the list.
Additionaly, applying for Federal money to widen and reconfigure the Harrisburg Pike @ Rt. 30 to accommodate Dale High’s “The Crossings” shopping center across from Long’s Park, while there are other roads, Rt. 741 for instance, which are badly in need of attention.
“The top nine executives at LGH had their basic salaries doubled in 2008?” You sure about that? The headline of your other story says “Nine top LGH executives averaged 50% pay increases in 2008” Besides the grossly misleading headline, 50% does not equal a double. Time for another apology?
EDITOR: You are right and I apologize. Wouldn’t it be even better if LGH apologized for using funds from a Public Charity to incease basic compensation by 50%?
Pretty impressive list so far…….can’t agree with you more. How many ‘tax exempt’ properties are there within the city limits….what dollars are being lost by their status?
Streets are always being torn up, no movie theater or department store downtown, upper end restaurants and eclectic stores cater to thse with ‘refined’ tastes. Not much to draw the ‘common shopper’ or ‘common visitor’ downtown……we haven’t been there for YEARS.
Don’t forget about the continuous stream of heavy traffic, including numerous tractor trailers, rumbling at high speed through the city center on what should be local, and at times even pedestrian-only streets.
Without a Rte 222 bypass, downtown Lancaster will never come close to having the warm and inviting ambience many other cities have created to lure people downtown.