“And then there was Katrina. . “

Those were the epic words of Al Gore tying the devastation of a Cat-3 hurricane that came ashore in a city that failed to evacuate and government utterly failed.  The problem is that Gore asserted the nightmare wasn’t due to the failure to evacuate but that man-made Global Warming was sending a signal to us and that many more Cat-3 storms would be on the way.  That was in 2006.

Six years later and NOW weather folks are worried that we’re too complacent because we’re not getting hit often enough. From the Weather Channel:

As the U.S. nears 2,500 days without a Category 3 or higher hurricane, weather and disaster experts worry that Hurricanes Wilma, Katrina and Rita will become hazy memories and Americans will go soft, letting their batteries die, misplacing their flashlights and forgetting their emergency plans.

“Nobody thinks it’s going to happen. Nobody prepares,” says Scott Pinto, 48, food and beverage manager for Historic Inns of Key West.

Actually, we were all told it was going to happen more often with greater intensity.  And it hasn’t.  Instead the alarmists are focusing on sea level and drought issues.  There’s always something.  But it is worth noting that the catastrophic predictions of Gore have absolutely NOT come true.  I will stand by my predictions since the beginning of this blog.  We will get hit, eventually, that’s just the way it works and not because my vehicle doesn’t get 60MPG.

Wilmington Tax/Spending Issues Mount

There’s just a few too many to keep track of succinctly, but we’ll try:

1) Olsen Park situation – facing legal scrutiny alleging that the city is NOT meeting it’s financial and development obligations on the park.  More on this over at WWAY here.

2) Parking Deck fiasco – City sells it, buys it back for lots more than it paid for it, may consider selling it back for less than it paid for it.  It’s just confusing. . . More on this from the StarNews editorial page.

3) Golf Course – Through all of this, not much has been said about the city purchasing a second golf course (yes, they have two). Only half of it will end up being a golf course, the rest will be a walking trail as far as we can tell, but nobody’s talking about it.  Well over $1m in taxpayer dollars spent here as well.

4) Convention Hotel – $30k with a taxpayer paid consultant, multiple failed attempts to solicit a purveyor of hotels and after the fourth round they get Harmony Suites (sole bidder).  Now the city is having issues with the fact that Embassy Suites has a tie to Hilton and Hilton might have a problem with a government favored hotel almost adjacent to their current hotel.  Behind schedule, reducing proposed rooms from 194 to 174 and in over their heads, the city is delaying the agreement again.

5) Indigo Hotel – meanwhile, on the other side of the convention center, Indigo is modifying their hotel a bit, downsizing as well.  This same hotel is on the property owned by a guy who owed the city a sizable tax bill, had a bankruptcy, is upside down on waterfront property.  Oh, and owns the property the city wants to build a taxpayer funded baseball stadium on.

6) Baseball – Taxpayers are being asked to vote on a $37m taxpayer funded baseball stadium (with property tax increase) but the city doesn’t even have an agreement with the baseball franchise as of yet.  Geesh!

The city is not running with a clear sense of reality lately and virtually no vision.  This note doesn’t include the expenditures on the cross city trail, the fountain issues nor the deepening problem with morale in the fire and police departments that have watched city expenditures rise significantly even as their pay has not risen at all over the past few years save for a small raise this year.

Also omitted, the long delayed and behind schedule 3rd street renovation, the multi-billion Skyway bridge desires, the 20% of Wilmington streets that have been determined to be unsatisfactory.  The list goes on and on.