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Good Record Depends on Bad Memory As I read an Aug. 25 letter to the editor in the Saddleback Valley News about redevelopment, I wondered how many people noticed the errors. The letter I’m referring to gave incorrect information about the council’s July 2003 decision to provide redevelopment money to a car dealer. To set the record straight, the dealer was twice turned down by the city council. The dealer’s proposals were successfully defeated until Councilwoman Trish Kelley brought the item back for a third airing, at which time the dealer received $600,000 of our taxpayer funds. Despite information in the Aug. 25 letter saying the giveaway was such a bad deal, the letter writer was at the public microphone in July 2003 advocating for the giveaway. The letter writer also claims that “we” had to lobby the gift down from $2.1 million, and that’s ridiculous. The council twice said no, and lobbying wasn’t involved except for politicians from outside the city pressuring for the giveaway. After the first two votes, the amount given to the dealer was zero, and that’s where it should have ended. To say the third vote “saved” the taxpayers money is false – it was a loss of $600,000. Taxpayers should be angry when the council throws money away, and newspaper readers should be angry when a letter writer tries to spin the loss into a savings three years later. Bo Klein |
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