Government overspending happens when federal, state, or local governments spend more money than they take in through tax. This type of overspending can lead to negative consequences for the government and its people. Overspending is defined as spending in excess of one’s income.
Jersey Village, like other small cities, has to balance “needs” against “ability to pay”. The priority items should always be the basic services expected from any city government including; water, sewer, garbage collection, safe streets and sidewalks, police and fire protection, and city management that is responsible for the resident’s property taxes. Where cities and other governments get in trouble is when they see a “need” and then turn that “need” into an opportunity to “Go Big”. That is when those discussions that become planning sessions can fall victim to “Group Think” problems, where there are only the “Pro” voices allowed as part of the “Blue Sky” discussions. Ideas morph into “Harebrained” ideas that go unchallenged.
The Jersey Village Golf Course has a history that needs to be understood by the residents in order to keep things in perspective. That history is for a different document from this one, but it is important to understand that the residents have only been provided a view of the golf course financial situation that the city council has chosen to provide. It would be interesting to know what percent of the residents actually play golf at the city-owned course or use the clubhouse. Another question is, “How many members of City Council use the golf course on a regular basis?” Is that percentage greater than the percent of residents as a whole that uses the golf course on a regular basis? Has the City Council placed a higher priority on building a new clubhouse because of their personal use rather than the needs of the residents in large? How did it grow from needing a cleaner and more attractive clubhouse to a plan to build a much larger building to get into the convention business? This idea has the same people supporting it as those that developed the Village Center Project idea. That started as a need for better office space for city employees.
With the Village Center Project, Jersey Village City Council bought the land using $8.2 million of “surplus funds” without submitting the decision to the voters and then entered into an agreement with a group to develop the Village Center Project on that land. For years, the residents were told that the Village Center would bring many new great businesses to JV and provide a lot of additional tax revenue to the city. However, for several years the land has not been developed and it also has not produced any property tax income since owned by the city (a net loss of property tax). Around $487,000 was paid to the group for a conceptual design of the project with only very rough drawings of the proposed development with no detailed drawings or plans provided. City Council was prepared to enter into a separate contract with another company to design and construct a new city hall on part of the land within the Village Center even without the developer purchasing the land from the city for the $8.2 million as per the agreement. Other documents are available that discuss the flaws of that project so the details are not provided here. However, the idea for the Golf Course Clubhouse Convention Center was being pushed even before the news that the developer for the Village Center Project had backed out of the project.
The Jersey Village City Council is planning to put a bond issue on the May Ballot for voter approval to sell bonds to borrow enough funds to build the Golf Course Clubhouse Convention Center, new parking lot(s), and access street with other improvements. The golf course building is estimated to be about $7.5 million with another $1.5 million or more for related requirements. JVCC still has in excess of $11 million in surplus funds they still plan to use to build a new city hall building. During the tax work sessions, the bond amount discussed was $20 million. Some on JVCC said the projects need to be started sooner rather than at a later date when the city would have less debt on the books.
The idea that the city can get into the convention business and compete with other locations like hotels and existing convention centers at a time when many have struggled raises many questions. Any major project taken on costing millions should include a Cost/Benefit Analysis done by a third party not involved with the project(s). Any additional funding for the Golf Course should require an outside audit of all expenditures including the purchase price and all expenses incurred since that date including the interest paid on the debt from the purchase date to the current. That expense has been removed from the financials for some time. The audit should include true yearly reports with a chart showing profit/loss trends that support the concept that it would be profitable into the future with the additional $10+ million of investments. For many residents in Jersey Village, flooding is a much bigger concern than additional spending on the golf course.
Below are excerpts from an article about how the convention business has been affected in Florida. Florida is the state that has had the least amount of time in “lockdown”. It is too early to know what the convention business will look like.
“When coronavirus struck, the Orlando convention business was hit first. Now it’s ‘devastated’”
The convention business felt it first. In late February, about a week before Florida reported its first case of the novel coronavirus, emails were already streaming into the Orange County Convention Center from concerned show organizers. Within a week of the flurry of emails, three of those conferences had already canceled and one of them, the sign expo, rescheduled to late August. Those cancellations were the first sign of an economic downturn that has now become an outright collapse in the travel market in Orlando, home to the second-largest convention center in the nation, and across the globe. It’s led to layoffs, job reductions and the potential shuttering of businesses that support the industry.
“It was like air got sucked out of the room,” said Nils Warren an audio engineer whose friend was setting up for HIMSS. “It went from people banging and pounding on stuff, the forklifts driving around — it went to sounding like a funeral home, it was dead quiet.”
The impact, so far, has been severe: 10 shows have canceled at the convention center, representing a collective $362.5 million in economic impact, plus a bevy of others at area hotels. Another 12 conventions have rescheduled, accounting for an additional $262 million. And it all happened in the middle of the busy season, the time of the year most companies and workers make the bulk of their annual revenue.
Cathy Breden, executive vice president and chief operating officer of the International Association of Exhibitions and Events, said the result has been “devastating.”
“This isn’t just touching the exhibition organizers themselves, it’s also impacting the contractors and obviously the hotels, the audio visual companies, the florists — the whole, what I call, ‘the ecosystem,’” Breden said.
According to the Center for Exhibition Industry Research, about 50 to 80% of all shows nationwide between March 1 and May 15 are expected to cancel or reschedule, resulting in a loss between $2.3 billion to $3.6 billion. In Orlando, audio visual company CCR Solutions, which does a lot of work at the convention center and area hotels, has already felt the hurt. It laid off 30 of its 37 staffers in Orlando last week.
“I’ve looked every one of them in the eyes,” said general manager Jeffrey Kelly. “This is something that we couldn’t be ready for and there is no answer to give people for these situations.”
Most of his staff lives paycheck to paycheck and he doesn’t know when or if he’ll be able to hire them back when shows ramp up again. Those employed in food and beverage at the center said when the cancellations started, they wouldn’t stop.