Is Mayor Johnson wasting taxpayer money?

Great Pont LittleDeb. I hadn't even thought of that. I did a google search to get a picture of this machine and hit a website that sold them. Here is the price.

Purchase the insert machine: $3,495.00 Click here for website

Lease the machine $4,958.10 Lease Agreement


Here is a picture of the machine. Click here.

Well, If Mr. Lang wants it, what difference does it make how much it
costs? He is waY tOO busy to research prices and vendors...I think
we have experienced this before. It's not HIS money he is spending.
Thanks for your research Lady Hawk - that would have been too
much to ask of the people in charge of this town.

I thought I would resurrect this thread so that the voters can really see how ineffective his adminstration has been.

He continues to enunciate ill-founded economic theories. His education tells him that building empty houses will help the tax base. Wow! Without jobs we do not need houses.

The truth is that until we create jobs our population will continue to decrease and if the cities plan clearly shows significant decreases in population is anticipated. Why do we need houses with declining population.

The mayors economic theories are in the opposite order and priority. If we create jobs we will need to build houses. We need to create jobs first and the houses will follow. Building houses without creating jobs is like taking taxpayer money to a casino.

We should not be gambling with taxpayer money.

I visited with a lady last summer who told me that she and her husband moved here several years ago after coming to town and falling in love with a house. They bought it thinking that a job would soon be available. Here we were several years later and her husband still lives in the Cities with relatives while she lives here, in their house, waiting for the job that they were told would be theirs. She wants to sell it and get out of here.

This past week I ran into a lady that I knew and I asked her how things were going. She told me that she got a job in the cities and works there 4 days a week and comes back home to be with her husband for the 3 day weekend.

This is how some people have to make ends meet in Ortonville. Without good paying jobs people have to go elsewhere. There is no point in buying a home if people don't have jobs to pay for them.

That is unless you don't expect the people buying the homes to have jobs. If you are looking to make a retirement community then jobs aren't necessary. The city can pay for the golf course for the retirees moving to the city of Ortonville and the city also owns the hospital and clinic that retirees will need. All you have to do is have a few restaurants for them to go out to eat at. Is that the plan?

mayorblair wrote:

(page 1 post #4) I feel that tourism and getting people to move to our town for retirement etc are an important part of our cities responsibility...

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mayorblair wrote:

(page1 post #11) Tourism is needed to help bring people to our community ... These tourists become potential retirees to our area...Golf is not just about tourism, it is also about retirement opportunities. I have talked to several retiriees who would not have retired to Ortonville if we didn't have the golf course. Retirement is a form of economic development because they bring an "income" that gets spent and recirculated in Ortonville....

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mayorblair wrote:

(page1 post #13) The reason housing and retirement people are necessary to keep our downtown and all other businesses including the hospital, clinic, restaurants, gas stations etc. is because without residents and tourists to shop at our businesses there would be no business...

Just forget the activities for kids. We don't need families moving here. No reason to build an indoor ice arena or a water park or skate park for kids. Personally I find that kind of vision narrow, and scary.

It also appears disingenious for Mayor Blair Johnson to be repeatedly promoting housing as the economic development savior of this community when his client Mr. James Larsen is a housing developer. You have James Larsen going before the city council asking for a 5 million dollar bond and you can read how his accountant Mayor Blair Johnson tries to move it forward. See 5 million dollar bond

Like the song says......I can see clearly now.....

It should be apparent in this thread, one of our first, that a responsible public servant would not waste money. We wasted money on our new postage machine and we continue to waste money with this administration.

I am also concerned about the hyprocrisy of saying how important infra-structure is when the mayor moved about $35,000 from infra-structure to the golf course.

Seems like he his talking out of both sides of his mouth.