Trojan Horse lives on in city plan

Trojan Horse lives on in city plan

To the editor,

The city is considering whether or not to commit approximately a million dollars to provide water and sewer service to a proposed light industrial/tourist park, which was the subject of a report received by City Council at their meeting of June 21, 2011. The property slated for development is apparently located outside the city limits of Ritzville.

The report proposes five types of small business for the proposed light industrial/tourist park: a flour mill, tortilla factory, bakery, noodle manufacturing and a craft distillery. The scale of the proposed business is very small and their viability is extremely doubtful. Even if someone wanted to step forward and create one of these businesses, all except one, the flour mill, could just as easily, and far more inexpensively, be located in one or more of the many vacant commercial buildings already existing in town, without the necessity of the city spending a million dollars it doesn’t have on infrastructure.

Who would benefit from the proposed million-dollar expenditure by the city? Certainly the landowner could benefit from the increased sale value of the property resulting from its access to water, sewer and utilities.

It is unclear how the city would benefit. The revenues, if any, from new water and sewer billing generated by the proposed site would take hundreds of years to repay the indebtedness incurred by the city for the project.

The citizens of Ritzville would be burdened by an additional million dollars of indebtedness.

Assuming that this debt is at the best terms possible (20 year loan at one percent interest), and is repaid by increasing the water/sewer rates to the residents, this is estimated to raise the water/sewer rates approximately $10 per month.

(Don’t forget, the city has already announced in the June 9, 2011, edition of The Ritzville Adams County Journal that a total of $6.3 million dollars is necessary to add a new well and make improvements to the water delivery system. A local retired economics professor has calculated that this will add at least $40 per month to every water/sewer bill in the very near future.)

Would any local businesses benefit from the proposed development? Possibly, but I don’t know of anyone anxious to build on the new location EXCEPT one.

The Trojan Horse beneficiary is identified in the Proposal and Contract for the Ritzville Industrial Park Feasibility and Planning Study, dated May 2010, which states on page 10 of 14, “We also understand that the East Adams County Rural Hospital is interested in a site adjacent to the proposed industrial park site for a new hospital and that the City will share the infrastructure requirements identified with the East Adams Rural Hospital.”

I don’t necessarily have anything against the provision of city water and sewer for a hospital, but wouldn’t you as a citizen feel more comfortable with an administration that didn’t try to obfuscate the motives and goals of such projects?

Pete Collard

Ritzville