McEuen plan shows city is out of touch

I attended one of the first McEuen Field meetings and was very surprised at the extensiveness and obvious expensive changes that are being proposed without any price tags at all.

At the meeting I attended not one mention was made of a vote to just leave the field as it is for now. I stood up during the open forum portion and commented about the City not being able to keep up all the parks and public facilities now, and asked how they could propose a park redesign and expansion of this size without knowing what the cost for the proposed upgrades would be? I questioned why we were being asked to vote when we weren't given the comparative costs of each item we were voting on? I was the only person at that meeting to question the cost. Within days I received a voicemail message from the Parks Director questioning why I had made the comment about the city not being able to keep up the parks. Has he called other people who have commented - or just the people who question the plan?

No public project of this scope should ever be proposed or even considered without first having a budget, full design and build costs, full operation and upkeep costs and then going to the taxpayers for an approval by vote. The Lake City Development Corp. (LCDC) is very involved in the McEuen Field project. How much has already been approved and spent on this project?

I live in an Urban Renewal District (URD) and one block from McEuen Field and have been very frustrated by the lack of knowledge by the general public regarding URDs & LCDC, what they are and how they work. A large portion of property taxes from those of us in the URDs are being siphoned into the local urban renewal agency LCDC and then used for "approved" projects and to subsidize private for profit developments such as town homes, condos, artwork, landscaping, ornamental fencing, brick facades ... the list goes on. I drive by these subsidized projects every day and as I watch another neighbor lose their home to a bad economy, it just sickens me. Unfortunately many city residents are too busy just trying to survive to pay full attention or to fight another battle.

People seem to think the money spent on all these projects is just "government" money. It is not - it is property tax revenue collected from home and business owners located in a designated URD. Our property taxes have gone up exponentially while a handful of local developers benefit from those monies collected, redirected, then doled out strategically by LCDC. Do your homework property owners, Urban Renewal is a development tool being terribly misused and abused all across our nation. It is simply wrong. The cost of the McEuen Field plan as proposed would be staggering - not just to build, but the operation, maintenance, security, and vandalism repairs. It would be a monumental park at a colossal cost. New York's Central Park was mentioned several times during the McEuen planning meeting; the cost to operate and maintain just this one park in New York City is $12 million annually.

Everyone would love to have a beautiful new park with extensive amenities - but at what cost? Why such a huge investment in just one park in one area of town? Who is it being designed to benefit most ... local residents, tourists, downtown business owners, developers, high-rise condo owners? Would the majority of property taxpayers vote for it? In these uncertain times is this really our city's priority? Our nation is in a state of financial crisis as are many Coeur d'Alene residents and businesses. States and municipalities across the nation are proposing bankruptcy. We cannot afford to spend a single dollar needlessly, either at home, in our businesses or in our government. There are countless other more important uses of taxpayer dollars than designing and creating a mega park. Is the city completely out of touch with reality?

Rita Sims-Snyder is a Coeur d'Alene resident