Five bucks a carload — that is the official bailout plan for the $38 million U.S. National Log Flume Ride. The bankers have decreed it, so local taxpayers must pay it.
To recap, that is county-owed public parkland, criss-crossed with biking and hiking trails built by volunteers that the public will now have to pay to get access to. And that on top of public subsidies worth millions each year. Boy, what a great deal.
And I have no idea what center huckster-in-chief Jeff Wise is talking about he tells the Uptown paper of record about “a $1.9 million profit in cash flow.” Even allowing Wise to count the $1.7 million in government handouts toward that number it does not change the fact that the center cannot pay its debt load, which is running at $2 million plus a year.
Bigger picture, the center itself is generating, at most, $6 million in revenue a year with expenses of $10 million a year. Trying to get $5 a carload ain’t gonna fix that.
