Arena financing another failure of our leadership

During the Mayoral race in 2006 I was the only candidate against an arena because I felt it was unaffordable and unnecessary based on my conclusions looking at our future.

Today it appears I am not the only one who thinks that. The sad part is it is now 2 years later and being unaffordable based on economic times have proven true.

Where was leadership in 2006?

If I could see this coming why didn't they? Simply because as usual the power elite makes a decision and forces it through regardless of any obstacles. They just do not look for them.

We the people get stuck with their decisions and we pay for them financially. No risk means no responsibility in their eyes.

As a matter of fact the old trick pony show the media plays such as show the good news in the most glowing light possible, no matter how recycled it is like the Ford announcement of retooling LAP that we have known about for a year or better now, and bury the bad news such as the CJ story covering this debacle of arena financing, seems to be an all too familiar trait of this Mayor getting away with non transparency.

Seriously it almost seems as if our local media has a person that sits and makes decisions that say hey we cannot show how bad it really is. They act like the first thing they think of is "don't we have some old news we can recycle to hide the truth from the people?" I mean the arena financing was buried in the business section at CJ. Wanna bet if they do find financing somehow it will be front page news?

Recycle the good news over and over and make the people believe something different is happening.

We are smarter than that.

Look at the old Humana building (still owned by Humana) that was imploded last Saturday for example. It was a huge media local event that included Mayor Jerry Abramson declaring this was the end to the beginning of the new arena.

Never mind that Humana was recently saying they needed more office space Downtown.

If so why get rid of a perfectly good building to help fulfill that need? Good question. Who benefited from railroading this implosion through knowing the financing was NOT complete to do a project of this magnitude?

Then to offer an alternative such as other bonders willing to do interest rate swaps when Municipalities across the country, such as Birmingham Alabama I referred to in an earlier article, are going bankrupt from this trickery in financing is insulting to our intelligence.

Less than a week later there is no financing. Who is paying for the demo project to this point and what is yet to happen with an ill advised little thought out plan?

Did they not know they were in trouble with financing prior to the implosion? If I knew it 3 years ago, and I am not a financier, how could they not?

Of course they did but as usual the philosophy of this Mayor and his cronies have been based on an imaginary movie called Field of Dreams.

If you build it they will come.

And if you demolish it and make a good enough show they will not notice we cannot afford it and cannot finance it. Of course then the argument will be simply this, "well we have already started and invested some money in it we must move forward now."

Will we continue to fall for this trickery from this Mayor and his cronies or will we finally say enough is enough and start reigning in unchecked power.

In 2006 as part of my Mayoral campaign I pointed out that Louisville Metro home foreclosures were at a 10-year high. The number of homes being auctioned off had doubled over the past three years. In short our economy was already going backwards and I said it would continue that spiral.

As a matter of fact in April 2006 the "Wall Street Journal" ranked the state number one, with more than two percent of its loans in foreclosure.

I quoted the following that this rapid rise in home foreclosures will continue, as long as certain other things are also going up... namely, job loss, divorce, predatory lending, and over-spending.

In the interim unemployment has risen and continues to rise. Our biggest mortgage holders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are reportedly in trouble.

I told everyone that Ford was in trouble and we needed to respond immediately in January of 2006 only to have the Mayor wait 8 months, until August of 2006, to speak with them. We all know what has happened since then with Ford downsizing and layoff after layoff adding to the tax burden of us all.

I advocated then to avoid the arena at that time and focus on economic and infrastructure development primarily with a surge in small business for our area to grow. These indicators have been here since at least 2003 and have steadily gotten worse in the interim as predicted.

Do I mention this as a way of patting myself on the back?

Quite the contrary no one wishes more than I do that I would have been proven wrong.

None of us are exempt from going through hard times today including me, but we can work towards a better tomorrow. This situation was avoidable or at least could have been a whole lot less stressful if we would have had transparency from the outset and a new way of looking at our future.

We cannot continue down the path of doing the same old things the same old way and expecting a better result.

It is time we took the blinders off and held Mayor Abramson and his cronies accountable for our future.