Once again, this is nothing personal. In fact I have recently sent something to the Miner that they might print... and that will be subject to fisking by anyone who so chooses.
I can't possibly address the whole letter, even though it is not that long, it is just so loaded at the beginning I know I'll be at this awhile.
Here goes...
I was surprised that the city is going to continue working with Vestar.
First, there was a referendum with more than 1,000 signatures to get Kingman Crossing on the ballot in November.
First off, the referendum issue is not on the city working with a developer. The ballot issue involves reversing a City Council decision to change the land use designation on the General Plan. There is no comparison here... only misinformation.
The Council and the city are ignoring this effort (the 1,000 sig's -- my add) and proceeding ahead with "their" plans. What seems clear to me, but I may be wrong - is that if we give Vestar an unbelievable 60-percent tax break for an indefinite time, how is the city going to make money off of the sales tax? I thought sales taxes were our lifeblood!
Once again this issue has nothing to do with the referendum. Completely different items here that are being crossed for no good reason.
The developer (Vestar) is on record as saying they have made no such negotiations with the city about reimbursement for providing the infrastructure that the city does not have the money for and therefore can't provide.
This November on the ballot voters will see one referendum that lets the voters decide on reversing a decision by City Council to allow a change to the General Plan. Voters will also see a choice to give the City Council permission to sell the city owned lands. There will be nothing on the ballot that speaks to the traffic interchange or the developers involved on the north side of the Interstate near Kingman Crossing. Nothing on regional parks or anything else that can be considered a hot topic of discussion.
Once Kingman Crossing is complete, will they have full occupancy? Can they succeed where others have failed?
That is up to them, the private company that was hired by the private property owner of the land on the north side. Sales tax dollars are very important to this city, so the hope here is that they do have full occupancy and are successful.
The real success would indicate that more folks in Kingman stay in Kingman to spend money and the good and services they require... AND that other shoppers from the region also come here to do the very same thing. These represent two things that are NOT happening right now.
We will then have more small businesses going out of business because they can't compete.
Small business will have to adjust and service their current customers better so that they are still a relevant choice for the consumer. I'd love to buy deli meat's at a real deli in Kingman, but the kind of deli that I'm talking about does not exist here. In fact there are a ton of small business opportunities that will be available at a certain point once Kingman grows to support such things. Go to any big city in America and you will find plenty of small business success. I don't buy what the writer says here and I think it is a cop-out.
Now I hear that Frontier's Call Center is going to leave and take quite a few jobs out of Kingman.
Actually, the personnel loss is minimal at Frontier. Maybe 50 jobs and of those Frontier has hired a consulting firm to aid those employee's in their efforts to find other jobs either in Kingman or otherwise. Many of the remaining employees are doing the same job they've been doing, but doing so from home instead of the call center on Stockton Hill.
What Kingman really lost out on was another 150 to 200 jobs to add by the call center closing. How?? Frontier was in the process of reducing their number of call centers across the country and the consolidating effort led to selecting a few properties to continue call center activities.
Even though Frontier had this nice big building located in Kingman already, with enough room for the extra employees, they decided on other locations where they had to buy the facilities. The reason was that they felt there wasn't enough of an employment base currently in Kingman to support what they call a Super-Center.
Kingman lost out on potential jobs that will have a larger affect on the community then the actual jobs that were lost. To me it is a clear signal that Kingman has not matured enough to be thought of as a great place to do big business with a large employment force. That is scary, especially to the tax base.
If we lose what little sales tax base we now have, how will we recoup the income for the city? I believe it will be by raising everyone's property taxes.
Uh.. right now in Kingman we don't pay property taxes. The property taxes that you do pay currently go the Mohave County. However we have heard over and over the current mayor (this current term and his previous) that Kingman needs a property tax. So it is possible that we will be voting on that subject again. Last time a property tax for Kingman was on the ballot it lost badly.
The city council let Paul Beecher write his own contract, and now we are letting Vestar write their own terms and conditions. Haven't we learned anything from our past mistakes?
The above is nothing but fear mongering and misinformation. The last thing I want to see is a private company writing their own agreement. If something like that was to happen, I'm certain we'd see another referendum on any decision the City Council makes to that effect, I'll even grab a clipboard with a RAID sticker on the bottom and help get the signitures.
Again, I might have something in the paper that will up for public scorn. I'm ready for it and hope that when it comes the folks doing the scoring would simply show me where I'm wrong.
I'll keep my eyes on the letters to the editor for more fisking opportunities, so until next time, you don't have to go home but you can't stay here.
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