Leave The Steamplant alone or / You can't have your cake and eat it to.
Leave the Steamplant alone-----Please!!!!
I applaud the friends of the Steamplant and anyone else for that matter that defends our public infrastructure such as the Steamplant, the pool, and our parks and trails. Keep up the good work and sing your praises loud and clear!!! And, Thank You Mountain Mail for providing opportunity to let us air this stuff out.
Ok, so----let’s just say that the City of Salida is a business. Any good business man knows that in order to do business one has to get folks in the door. That is usually done in a few ways; one is that you have such a unique product or service that folks just got to have it. Another is by marketing your goods or services to your target demographic. Yet another, which is also quite common, is to offer a “loss leader”, a product or service that the business losses money on but hopefully entices it’s customer in the door so that they may find a product / service that they want or need that the business then makes money on and therefore makes up for the loss from the “loss leader”. Whew!
The Steamplant, parks and trails, and pool all serve the above mentioned business tools so that the business and businesses of Salida may prosper.
As a business, Salida must be doing a good job as we have thrived through what some call the worst recession in history, which much of the country still suffers from.
Bottom line-----we can’t have our cake and eat it to!
Back in 2008 when we passed the “Ordinance 2008-34 1% Sales Tax Increase-Repeal of Property tax” to pay for roads and infrastructure from sales tax proceeds we got rid of Salida Property taxes. In essence what we said is; let’s let tourism pay for our property driven infrastructure. Now it seems we don’t want to encourage tourism. Folks, we can’t have it both ways, period.
Greg Walter
Comments
Thanks Greg for the businessman's perspective. You are right on!
Louise Fish
Mr. Farney, who devoted 30 years of his life to teaching art and instilling an appreciation for the arts in young people, commented on this and yesterday's Mountain Mail story in a letter in today's paper.
2014-28 does not equal the end of the SteamPlant. In fact, a lot of this year's SteamPlant expenditures are actually capital, not operating, expenditures.
Please be aware of (and sensitive to) the possibility of false paradigms created by city propaganda (i.e. - tourists will quit coming, the SteamPlant will close, and our children can't play in the river if 2014-28 passes; Salida will not be great and nobody will work for the city unless employees have platinum benefits packages). None of these paradigms are grounded in reality.