City Hall
To the Editor:
There are some interesting things going on at City Hall.
Citizens of Plymouth, just so you are aware, the mayor and the council are going to vote to commit a bundle of your hard-earned money Tuesday night, June 8. At that time they will try to push through a number of plans committing between $4 million-$12 million of your money.
Granted, some of the plans are needed, but the bulk of the money is allocated to projects that have no formal economic plan, no projected proposal on the costs or benefits and no written background on the reason the costs are necessary. These are ideas and dreams to allocate your dollars to projects that some of this group feel the city should finance.
Has the mayor or your councilperson explained to you, or any of your friends, the reason why the city of Plymouth wants to spend $8 million on a new utilities building? Have any of them mentioned that the utilities company is owned by Plymouth, and the company has between $8 million-$9 million in unrestricted reserves?
Why isn’t that money being used before taking money from the city budget? Another thought, why hasn’t some of it been used to help the school budget?
Or, why is there a push to continue spending another couple of million on the TIF area, when the big $65 million company that was supposed to bring 450 new jobs, turned out to be a farce? A prime example of having no economic plan to review, no proposal on paper that could be evaluated and in that case, one person making all the commitments.
The editorial in last week’s Review was right on point. If we have decided to have a new city attorney and hope to have a new city manager soon, why stack the deck against them? Why not let them do the job professionally? Let them do the job they are hired to do.
It is good to have an eye to the future and make plans that will keep Plymouth up to or ahead of neighboring cities, but there should be written plans, there should be economic projections, there should be transparency and there should be accountability before spending millions of dollars.
It may be too late for this $12 million, but call your representatives and tell them you want to know for what and why your money is being spent. Wouldn’t it be great to have had a referendum vote before this money was committed?
Jim Bordeau
Plymouth
