Today’s N&R follow-up on the latest twist in the downtown hotel saga has some interesting comments from some Greensboro City Council members:
Councilman Danny Thompson said he believes the bond authority and the Local Government Commission are more qualified to vet the project. The council did its job, Thompson said, by determining that all the projects met three criteria: they were inside the recovery zone, they were “shovel ready” and they would create new jobs.
“Speaking just for myself, if we were to bring it back up, looking at it, I haven’t heard of any new vetting information that we as a council would be qualified to look at,” he said.
“I’m not a bond underwriter or a risk manager,” Thompson said. “So vetting it financially, I still wouldn’t be able to do as far as, ‘Would it make money? Would it lose money?’”
Councilman Robbie Perkins agreed. “We passed what we passed with the full knowledge that it will be vetted at some point,” Perkins said. “We know now it will be vetted by the Local Government Commission. Let people who are trained in this area vet it instead of a group of local politicians that are caught in a firestorm.”
OK–if the City Council isn’t qualified to financially vet a multimillion-dollar hotel, then what makes them qualified to vet any of the other projects that come before them every year, many of them using taxpayers’ money?
