From the story you wrote and now your response, I presume you wrote the story based only on information provided by the city. I totally understand as that is actually no different than how journalists for other media deal with information given them by government about government initiatives.

What my response was meant to highlight was that the options “currently being presented as alternatives” are a limited and self-serving menu of possible solutions. Whether your purpose in any article you write is to “persuade readers” or not, it is a journalist’s responsibility to understand the implicit power of the journalist’s pen (or computer). When you produce a list with the insinuation that it is inclusive simply because one side of the issue (I grant you it is the powerful side) represents it as such, I’m not sure you are taking your powers as seriously as the powers deserve to be taken.

Bigger picture, the “other options which may possibly surface if the civic center fails” already surfaced, some as many as nearly 5 years ago. The city council and their fellow travelers on this issue prefer to cast this matter in all or nothing terms which gives no credence to those ideas. In fact, one of those ideas was to put a much smaller city hall proposition on the ballot in 2008 or 2009, which had every possibility of meaning the city would have never rented in the first place. That is our position now.

The primary attraction of that idea was that we, that’s you and me, would have not been on the hook for the money council borrowed to finance the lease/rent. They probably didn’t mention that they entered into that lease with the stated intention of borrowing both the principal and interest necessary to fund the 5-year lease, which was originally booked at $2.7 million. What that means and what many even strong proponents still don’t understand is that there has never been an ongoing revenue stream of revenues to pay rent. What “will run out by 2014″ is the capacity to fund an ill-advised lease with borrowed money. Rather than gamble with even more of our money by trying to persuade 60% of voters to accept the largest tax increase in our history, the more reasonable strategy after two losses would have been to ask for what an overwhelming majority of people recognize we need and know we can afford.

That’s not how they roll. To achieve far more than anyone had ever suggested was necessary or viable before early 2008, their strategy all along has been one of backing citizens into an apparently intractable corner from which their coercive solutions were the only exit. And so we get the false choice of building a $25 million Civic Center or rent a city hall forever. To “cut services or pass a property tax levy” is the scare tactic attached to this latest iteration of that plan. Despite the city’s presentation to you, neither of those options is either necessary or acceptable.

Len French

Class of 1967

Your Cousin,

Chad Lynch

The flowchart’s purpose was simply to outline the different options currently on the table.

The flowchart shows the options that are currently being presented as alternatives.

This story was not intended to persuade readers, simply to state the facts and to show the current options that could take effect.

Although other options may possibly surface if the civic center fails, the city will have to act on an option due to the fact that rent for the interim city hall will run out by 2014. In order to provide rent funds if the civic center were to fail, the city of MLT has presented these two options (cut services or pass a property tax levy) as the two main backup plans, if you will.

We appreciate your involvement in the conversation and encourage you continue to comment or to write a letter to the editor (editor@thehawkeye.org) to voice your opinion.

Building a much less exepnsive project with just a city hall, the alternative the NO campaign supports is just one. That could be accomplished by a vote later this year and the additional rental period necessary would be less than 12 months. The supporters do not mwention this option because it doesn’t make their case.

They don’t seem to understand that their coercive threats strategy creates even more opponents than if they were just straight with people about all of the options. They woudl rather push a bevy of dire consequences scenarios such as a chart showing the cost of 30 years rent – as if any serious person on either side ever suggested that as a reasonable possibility.

There is also no reason to either raise taxes or cut services. After the first proosition ($37.5 million) failed in November, 2010, the city began finding sources of funding to partially pay rent. That proved they understood that lessening the impact of the debt they are accruing every month for rent was important to them. It also proved they could find such sources if they tried. Finding an interim solution to pay the minimal additional rent necessary while they figure out how to ask for something that will passis yet another viable alternative not found in the flowchart.

When I saw the Civic Center 101 presentation, it was shocking to not only learn of the MTPD safety and security issues but also having to use a restroom and turn it into a filing / evidence storage / breast feeding room.

They, and we, deserve better.