Anthony D'Antonio The
mayor is running this city into the ground. There is no accountability
and no oversight. The taxpayers are being milked...as in cash cows! TIME
FOR A REAL CHANGE!!!
John Ghilain Remember you still have to replace the fire training tower and the fire dept is still in the same sick building .
Printed with Permission of Robert M. Penta
as of 12:50 pm Sunday May 19, 2019
Robert M. Penta $34 million and increasing every day as time goes by. The question to be answered is who is going to pay for this ? A complete financial breakdown of all $34 million dollars needs to be presented to our Medford taxpayers. As complained about, the $22 million dollar price tag for a new police station will be about 5,000 square feet less than needed and without having a shooting range and without having a complete all enclosed weather protected police vehicle enclosure should prompt the question as to why? Going forward, we are looking at over $53 million dollars of our taxpaying money that needs to finance a new police station and a new library for just these two projects as of now. Since the council has already committed to pay with Medford taxpayer's money for the police station as of now, the city has no guarantee beyond a $12 million state library grant that needs to be matched by the city with the remainder yet to acknowledged and accounted for by the city, The new huge, futuristic design and proposal for a new library really needs a city wide consensus. A city wide referendum for this fall's city election would make sense for the taxpayers to express their opinions as to whether a completely new library is needed or a modest update at a greatly reduced cost to the current library would suffice. The bones and foundation of the current library are in good shape. You, our Medford taxpayers, should be making this final decision. Make all elected officials know that you work too hard for your income not to have your vote recorded as to how this, at present cost $34 million new library proposal, will impact out tax rate. Thank you and respectfully written.
Cheryl Rodriguez Unfortunately,
the city is already committed to this. The only change they could have
made was to scale it down by 5% which I think they should have done as a
sign of good faith.
The mayor committed to fundraising between $12-$15M and so far they raised $25k almost two years later (and that was one check about two weeks ago from the Kiwanis).
But there is no incentive or urgency to raise the funds as the city council already promised to fund the balance.
A way to scale down may be to have them forego new furniture until such time as they can raise funds. That is actually a pretty high price tag. Perhaps losing the promise of new furniture would mobilize the fundraising.
Our elected officials need to press on why they haven’t started actively fundraising and why they are on their third fundraising consultant. Perhaps because those consultants consistently say we will only raise $3-$5M and not the outlandish figure the mayor promised.
The mayor committed to fundraising between $12-$15M and so far they raised $25k almost two years later (and that was one check about two weeks ago from the Kiwanis).
But there is no incentive or urgency to raise the funds as the city council already promised to fund the balance.
A way to scale down may be to have them forego new furniture until such time as they can raise funds. That is actually a pretty high price tag. Perhaps losing the promise of new furniture would mobilize the fundraising.
Our elected officials need to press on why they haven’t started actively fundraising and why they are on their third fundraising consultant. Perhaps because those consultants consistently say we will only raise $3-$5M and not the outlandish figure the mayor promised.
