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Taxpayer Money for Dead Malls?

July 18, 2012 | Written by
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Charlotte Patriots,

Well, they’re at it again.  Today, the Charlotte Observer reports that this coming Monday, the Charlotte City Council will once again discuss purchasing the old Eastland Mall property.  Having flushed millions down the toilet in 2009 debating the very same thing, the City Council is ready to waste yet more of your taxpayer dollars on crony capitalism.

The rationale behind this latest urge to spend taxpayer money on a dead mall is that the vacant stores inside the mall are owned by several different companies, all of which have the right to veto any particular use of the mall property.  This supposedly makes it difficult for any private party to buy the mall property and redevelop it.  The solution, according to the City Council, is for the city of Charlotte…that means you, Taxpayer…to buy up the whole thing and then re-sell it to a private developer, acting as a middleman.

We’ve heard this song and dance before.  Any time government gets involved in the private sector, the result is always graft and corruption. The likely outcome of a city purchase of the Eastland Mall property will be reselling the property to a politically-connected developer with the stipulation that the developer turn the mall into one of the much-vaunted “mixed-use” developments, cramming urban housing, office space, and retail space all into one location.

It won’t live up to the hype (see the failure of light-rail-driven development of South Blvd for examples), property values will continue to decline, with the main difference being that the city will have spent millions on construction for development no one is interested in, and then we’ll all probably have to bail out whatever developer got suckered into buying the property to start with.We can stop this stupidty right now.  Last month, you bombarded the Mayor and City Council with phone calls, emails, and faxes and stopped dead a bloated city budget crammed with over $900 million in pork spending, to be paid for with an 8% tax increase.  Thanks to your grassroots pressure, that spending and that tax increase are now dead.  We need to turn the heat back up to stop this latest irresponsible tax-and-spend scheme!That’s why I’m asking you today to email Mayor Foxx and the City Council and tell them to OPPOSE any use of taxpayer dollars to purchase Eastland Mall! Charlotteans are already the highest-taxed people in the Southeast.  Our problems will NOT be solved by looting taxpayers and throwing our money around like it grows on trees!

Please go to http://charmeck.org/city/charlotte/CityCouncil/MeettheCouncil/Pages/home.aspx for links to contact info for the individual City Council members and mayor.

In Liberty,

Adam Love
NC State Coordinator
Campaign for Liberty

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