The City Commission on Tuesday night committed to spend $130,000.00 of your money to benefit special interest groups when they voted 5-0 to support an Echo Grant application for the "Richenberg Fish Farm" at the old high school site.
Yes, this is the "fantasy zone project" that you have been assured for two years that NO CITY MONEY would be used to support. And where did they find the money? You guessed it, in the "bare bones" 2009-2010 budget that just two months ago Commissioner Jack Grasty whined could not be cut or "people would lose their jobs."
This was also the budget that eliminated five patrol officer positions and thus reduced your public safety. But it apparently was also a budget where someone hid up to $150,000 of your money to once again take care of our favorite charity, the Marine Discovery Center.
Yes folks, the MDC will have a new and free taxpayer supported home, along with the Artists Workshop (moving from their current free home at the Chamber Building), the Florida Fish and Wildlife Foundation (a private, non-state operation with a special interest focus), and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission (State) law enforcement.
This is an interesting approach to relocation as neither the FWC law enforcement nor the MDC can get their boats to the site as there is not enough water. But then, if you are Grasty just (a long time volunteer and supporter of the MDC who rushed to the crowd after the vote to hug his friends) that is not a problem as he will just make a motion that we use some more tax payer money to dredge the access.
Only Commissioner James Hathaway had the sense to ask who owned the property and insist that the it be clear that the City would not be responsible for the future maintenance.
The answer from our "freeloaders" was a weak "we will" that the City Commission failed to get in writing.
The City does not own the property, so we just funded an application that we will not write that will fund a move of special interest groups to a new free home that we do not own and will probably have to provide maintenance on you and my dime. Remember, the MDC can't even cut the grass on their free home now. A great deal if you are a special interest group; a really bad deal if you are a taxpayer.
Unfortunately for the taxpayer, it appears to be business as usual spending by our City Commission while citizens are losing their jobs and businesses are closing while we remain in the middle of a recession.