MASON CITY – The Mason City council on Tuesday night gave final approval to sell $25,400,000 in General Obligation bonds and the city named a new source to help pay off the burden – a debt service levy on the backs of city property owners.
Debt service levies are taxes assessed on property owners to pay off bonds. For much of last year and through the fall elections, the citizens of Mason City were told by the aggressive, well-funded, sometimes-vicious “YES” campaign that the hallowed Renaissance Project would not be a burden on taxpayers. They repeatedly promised Mason City citizens that sources such as state grants, TIF revenues, local option sales tax, and developer repayment fees would cover the cost to repay bonds sold by the city to raise funds to build the downtown project, which consists of a hotel, arena, pavilion, skywalk, museum and convention center.
the regular council meeting, but
magically appeared on the phone
for the closed session immediately afterward.
What kind of games are being played here?
However, as former Councilman Max Weaver pointed out Tuesday night, citizens were potentially misled or outright lied to about the potential pitfalls in the project. City documents and the council meeting packet itself now list a future debt service levy as a funding source to pay off the $24.5 million in General Obligation bonds the city intends to sell. Tuesday night at the regular city council meeting, John Lee (completely absent) and Tom Thoma (on the phone) were not in their seats, but a quorum was present. The agenda item authorizing the sale of about $30 million in General Obligation bonds for the Renaissance Project and other projects passed 5-0 with little discussion.
At the meeting, only one citizen spoke to the council with concerns about this massive spending spree backed up by taxpayers. Former councilman Max Weaver rattled off some of the “YES” campaign members who allegedly helped spread falsehoods that taxpayers would not be on the hook to payoff the Renaissance Project. He named Robin Anderson the “pied piper” who led the charge. In his remarks and later in conversations, he also pointed to underwear runner and wine-drinker Lonnie Dirksen, smug banker John Prebeck, “wives” of city councilmen who relentlessly argued in favor of the project, fake news professor John Skipper of the Globe Gazette, Ventura’s Darlena Barz of KGLO radio and her employee Robert Fisher, also of KGLO, where much of the “YES” campaign was masterminded, social media campaigns, websites, illegally placed signage and more that combined together orchestrated the myth of no burden to taxpayers. He alleged the “YES” crew “rigged” last fall’s elections, as well, to ensure the council was stocked with persons who would not ask questions or challenge the project.
“It’s like we were brainwashed,” Mr. Weaver said.
Mr. Weaver also said the Music Man Museum is a bad idea and not many people will care enough to go; he offered that a law enforcement / police museum would be a better idea. He says Southbridge Mall needs serious upgrades and fixes to accommodate the arena and pavilion and questioned whether mall owner Michael Kohan would invest in the structure. He pointed to Kohan’s dubious track record with his other properties.
The council, immediately after the regular council meeting, went into closed session to discuss the status of 5 candidates for the city’s vacant City Administrator position. In that meeting, John Lee joined the council via phone – he was absent for the regular meeting. Sources tell NIT he pushed for consideration of a certain person for the job who may or may not have been on the list of 5 candidates brought forth by consultants.
Mason City Council – unqualified morons acting like the good ‘ol boys elected by a majority stupid population running what’s left of this town into the ground. It’s the citizens of this town that will eventually get screwed cause they are dumb, lazy and stupid to stand up and do anything about it. They are scared ‘cause they might get singled out by the idiots they voted into office.
This is as funny as eating a fudge popsicle while sitting on the toilet. 🙂
When this little G8 entity fails to raise the private $10M minimum required by state law for this Hotel project the IEDA Board Will have to cancel it’s recent contingent approval of the MC Renaissance Project.
Thus there will be no hotel and no $9.6M over twenty years of diverted state sales tax assistance to MC toward re payment on the City’s General Obligation bond debt.
But don’t fret.
By voting to approve all those millions of GO bonds last November, voters gave the Councils for the next 20 years full authority to levy new debt service property tax on all of the taxable property in the city.
Thus at the 2/20/18 council meeting the truth had to be included in the list of revenue sources the city expects to tap into to retire this massive new GO bond debt. Including new debt service
property tax on you dear citizens.
So who lied to who in 2017?
I did alot of research nation wide and don’t give me that FALSE politically correct bullshit – it’s property tax funds or did you grow the millions of dollars in your back yard ? Not say you are or are not a weedie – you know like a snake in the weeds.