EDITOR:
Seeing your front-page headline “Fricker: ‘We’re going to have excess capacity, clearly’ and the accompanying story about “Clinton County negotiations to contract for our excess beds” exposes what I suspected.
*Why is our county government doing real estate speculation with our tax money? They are building excess jail capacity with side deals to “sell off” the excess.
Will those excess rooms be staffed for “room service” whether the vacationers show up or not, implying extra non-revenue generating variable costs? Please leave real estate speculation and risk with our money to private enterprises — my grandmother needs to leave her nest-egg with a bank CD.
*Please give the taxpayers copies of any proposed other counties’ contracts. If we are investing our monies in a build-for-hire project we should be able to assess the potential returns.
*Finally, what are all the management fee arrangements including any commissions structures?
I repeat: Clearly, Platte County needs to plan for and act on capacity growth for the next 30 years. However, the current proposal is a significant overbuild of needed capacity. This proposal should be defeated, and a different proposal be brought forward with better supporting information for the need and financing approaches.
--David Copas
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