Event center is suspect

Why are the North Idaho College trustees involved in the building of the proposed event center? Given that an occasional graduation program and a few sports events might be held in such a facility, does that justify NIC owning and managing it?

Who will pay for this facility? The Lake City Development Corporation has pledged $10 million. An additional $l5 million or more must be raised. The leading candidate location is Riverstone, which has already received financial support from the LCDC.

Is Riverstone a blighted area that still needs rehabilitation? NIC trustees have stated that they would not use taxpayer support to fund the facility. Not surprisingly, John Stone, the owner of Riverstone, has come out in support of the event center. He has written, “This project will have no debt associated with it.”

There will be millions of dollars of debt associated with the project that will be paid off by tax revenues from you and me and filtered through the LCDC to pay off bonds.

This appears to be an attempt to build a questionably viable project to benefit businesses/developers and to secretly place the burden of costs upon the public.

Philip Waring

Coeur d’Alene