Jeff Hawks column of 1/5/12 should be archived and rewritten when the Convention Center/Hotel fiasco falls apart in the future. Will he have the guts to rewrite and change the names???
EDITOR: Hawks wrote: “In separate interviews, [Wendy] Nagle and Sharron Nelson, a Heritage Center board member since 2009 and the current board chair, did not hesitate to identify poor business planning as the museum’s Achilles’ heel.
“‘I think (previous leaders) felt they would continue to run fundraisers and that somehow it would all take care of itself,’ Nelson said. ‘There were not people who sat down and said, “We need a solid business plan.”‘”
Six of the seven LCCCA board members had nothing to do with the creation of this fiscal fiasco; neither did its executive director or office manager. I have feared for many years that whoever is in these positions when the convention center eventually has publicly-revealed financial crises will take the blame for something they had far too little power to correct. The truth is, the tireless efforts of the current LCCCA staff and most of its current board members have clearly postponed the inevitable.
Kevin Molloy, Mary Ellen Davis, and most of the LCCCA board members deserve to be highly praised for their efforts to limit the burden this project places on taxpayers. The blame must be placed on those government officials, former board members, plutocrats, and other individuals who created these inexorable problems in the first place.