LETTER: Springs Preserve just another local boondoggle that costs taxpayers
So the Spring Preserve needs another $5 million subsidy to survive this year (Friday Review-Journal). The preserve is yet another one of our great political boondoggles, this idea thought up by former water czar Pat Mulroy. The private sector should have bankrolled this “attraction,” not the taxpayer.
Ms. Mulroy apparently assumed that tourists would be interested enough to leave their cozy casino to see this attraction. That would like be akin to assuming one would want to see the biggest ball of twine in Kansas while on the way to see the Grand Canyon. Like Yucca Mountain, the Springs Preserve has become just another non-ending revenue stream vacuumed from the wallets of the taxpayer.
The moral of the story is to have funding in place before something is built rather than rely on taxation. In the meantime, we will be paying down $140M in construction debt for another 20 years.