This commentary exposes one of the great miscarriages of both journalism and politics involved with this project.
There are 2 sides to any accounting equation, revenue and expenses, and that applies to both private AND public projects. That includes project like our little CC, even the ones that are supposed to LOSE money.
The media and those who pushed this project only ever spoke about one side…revenue. The revenue in the case of the CC is hotel taxes. Hotel taxes, like many revenue based taxes, are just as the proponents suggested, pretty stable sources of funding. It is true that our hotel tax revenue has disappointed of late and there are any number of reasons why that is the case but in the big picture, these swings are minor. While we have not seen much growth, not even close to the ridiculous pre-construction LCCCA estimates, that revenue stream is not going anywhere.
As cheerleader-in-chief Gib Armstrong once said, it would take a TMI like event to cause such a drop in hotel taxes as to jeopardize the project. That is the BIG LIE, and it was never challenged or questioned by LNP. What about the other side of the ledger? What about EXPENSES?
It is on the expense side where the real peril of this project exists. Why? Because like a bunch of lemmings being led to the edge of a cliff we accepted the numbers that were bought and paid for by the LCCCA as gospel. Hotel taxes won’t fall by 50% but why won’t expenses rise by 100%, 200% or 300%?
Why will we be different on this than other centers? I mean I know that we are different but why will our expenses be different? If we did not run at least 50% beyond projections on the expense side, we would be defying the odds.
So now, we start to hear about exactly this and we ask ourselves, why didn’t anyone ever mention this possibility before? Why?
Because the 50% partner in the only entity that will make any money off of this project also controls the local media and they never mentioned it, NOT EVEN ONCE!
