Dear Editor:
The farce currently being played out in Hollister’s own City Council follies would make a fine plot for a Broadway musical, except it was done several years ago, and in “The Music Man” the smooth talking, out-of-town con man was selling dreams wrapped up in band uniforms, floated on the blare of trombones and counterpoint.
In the current comedy, we are being told by Mr. Billy Avera of the Redevelopment Agency that unless the city lends our own Music man (building man?) a million dollars, for some unspecified period, for some unspecified purpose (except as it relates generally to the Union Bank Building), we are going to have trouble I say, right here in River City.
Can a scam so patently obvious be seriously taking up the time of the Council?
I suggest a 12-year-old would have no trouble in getting the Union Bank (owners of the building) to sell him the building with practically nothing down as long as the city guaranteed to lend a million dollars to take care of any building costs, loan payments, salaries for Mr. Building Man (for up to four years) with no assurance that the building could ever generate enough income to cover any part of the costs.
But of course neither the bank or Mr. Building Man care less, since the bank would be paid in full (even more than they originally asked as a purchase price) and Building Man would be assured of a well-paid four-year supervisor’s job.
Never mind Mr. Avera’s donation of our tax money would be used to pay off the bank, Mr. Building Man’s salary, interest charges, etc., and never mind that no detailed traceable plan is anywhere in sight as to when or how the million dollar loan is to be repaid or how it is to be secured, and never mind that no study has been done to determine if there is any economic logic in spending that kind of money on the building, and never mind that the bank, which is after all in the business of financing sound development projects (and only wants to get its cash out of this one), never mind, never mind, just listen to the trombones, see the marching band, lend the money before it’s too late.
This show is not funny. It’s got no rhythm, and that weird noise you hear is the sound of a million of our tax dollars being sucked into a drain already stuffed with city mistakes.
Lui Fenator
Hollister
