Posts Tagged ‘reckless spending’

(May 10, 2009) – - Why should you care that the City Council of Virginia Beach will use the Public Private Education Facilities Infrastructure Act (PPEA) funding scheme, borrow through the Economic Development Authority (EDA) without a referendum and build a headquarters hotel and an entertainment venue for the Dome Site?

Because council will stick the uninformed citizens of Virginia Beach and your children with more debt. That’s why.

The advantage goes all to city council: They borrow all the money they want and do not have to bother with a citizens referendum that could be defeated. So, rather than risk a NO vote on their pet projects, council simply goes through the Economic Development Authority borrows several hundred million dollars and promises that the citizens will pay back every cent.

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(April 28, 2009) – - Do you think that the Virginia Beach City Council should develop a business plan and demonstrate to all citizens that spending additional millions in the Resort Area is justified? Or, do you think it’s OK for council to keep chucking more taxpayers money into tourism projects without an estimate of the return on the expenditure of our tax dollars ? Or, maybe you believe that council has developed a business plan, realized that the numbers are not what they want, so they filed the plan in that infamous “round file.”

For a review of your tax millions already spent by council on tourism projects go to http://www.virginianewssource.com/vbt0001/Maj_proj1.html. The first section of the report shows projects completed at a total cost of at least $660 million. The second section shows projects in various planning stages, but does not include estimates for a headquarters hotel for the convention center and the entertainment venue at the Dome Site. Total cost of all of the planned projects will exceed $1.6 billion. For an estimate of the headquarters hotel and Dome Site projects, referencehttp://virginianewssource.com/boconnor/blog1.php/2009/04/13/more-debt
To fund the two new projects, council has decided to avoid a citizens referendum, again, by borrowing through the Economic Development Authority (EDA) and by using the Public Private Partnership for Educational Infrastructure Act (PPEA). What is PPEA?

The Commonwealth of Virginia passed a hybrid law called The Public-Private Education Facilities and Infrastructure Act of 2002 (PPEA). The act grants a public entity (For example the City of Virginia Beach) the authority to create public-private partnerships for the development of a wide range of projects for public use. Those allowable projects are listed as “qualifying projects”.

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