THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, October 10, 1995 TAG: 9510100011
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A8 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 43 lines
Guess how much of taxpayers' money has poured from South Hampton Roads cities' coffers into each of the many redevelopment projects in, say, the past 20 years or so?
Guess how much revenue each of these projects has returned, directly or indirectly, to Southside city treasuries?
Go on, guess: Your guess is almost as good as anybody else's. Nobody seems to know. Accepted principles of municipal accounting apparently don't require localities to keep running tabs on tax monies spent on economic-development projects and tax monies that come in as a result.
Take Norfolk's Nauticus. Since opening in June 1994, it hasn't met the attendance numbers consultants projected that it must and would meet in order to cover its operating and capital expenses. How has that lack of anticipated attendance at Nauticus affected not only the city budget but the ripple effect projected for Nau-ti-cus?
For that matter, what is the net effect of downtown redevelopment projects - from Scope to Waterside to the convention center to Nauticus - on Norfolk's city budget and private economy?
How much tax money went into them? How much tax revenue has come of them?
You'd think - and we do - that if city officials tout the benefits of Projects A through Z, they ought to be able to demonstrate them. Therefore, any city - given all its budget offices and numbers-crunchers - ought to have at the ready a reliable, comprehensible, complete picture of the financial pluses and minuses, if any, to show city officials and the citizenry. It is, after all, their city, their project and their money.
Keeping up with the outgo for and the income from municipal projects maybe isn't the done thing, municipal ac-count-ing-wise. But money-wise, politics-wise - and just plan wise-wise - it's something that ought to be done. by CNB