Naw, I'm not going to talk about the possibility of an educational IMAX "possibly" coming to the Riverfront museum that cash strapped schools will attend on field trips. When they do, they will have little to spend and admission fees will be slashed. The REAL IMAX will be built out near the Shoppes where the population is growing, where people won't have to pay to park underground. Nor a fee to enter the museum building plus an additional fee to see the big screen.
Whoops, I wasn't going to talk about the IMAX decision announced today, a decision made long ago while local movers and shakers where spending $40,000 in "intense" negotiations with IMAX officials while leading the pledgers, (still at least $16 million outstanding) on and on.
Darn it, there I go again, talking about the "Nooooooooooo IMAX", a blog I previously posted.
Let's get back to what Jesus said in Luke:1528. "Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he first not sit down and estimate the cost to SEE IF HE HAS ENOUGH MONEY TO COMPLETE IT?
Quoting from Columnist DeForest B. Soraias, Jr., in the WSJ on 10/1, "In Jesus teachings, Christians have sufficient content for financial guidance and prudent approaches to managing money." Mr. Soraias concludes that "Education, hard work and discipline are key components to any authentic prosperity plan."
It takes prosperity for pledgers to honor their pledges, which may be why so many have yet to honor their pledge. And strapped taxpayers to support this boondoogle, er, musuem.
OK, what do these words have to do with an IMAX and the Peoria Riverfront Museum.
A lot.
A review. The original request to the previously "outside looking in" Peoria County Board and it's administrator, was for $24 million, then $34+ million, then $40 million and presently $41 million. County Boards could go all the way to $80 million less projected $16 million in other charges including financing; the "facility" tax now averaging $4 million a year from this "puny" 1/4% sales tax.
The museum and county planning efforts so far have spent approximately $14 million; this planning reduced the size of the original size from 110,000 sq. ft. to 81,2,or 83 thousand sq. ft., the planners never had a REAL IMAX to lose; changing the exterior and interior design to something less than the originally planned "an unprecedented cultural campus highlighted by a digital 3-D IMAX theatre." A quote by Museum Adminstrator, Jim Richerson in IB magazine, 2010.
As far as the education part, $640,000 was spent on "educating our sports loving community" into accepting museum culture as part of the planning of "an authentic prosperity plan". Remember the Ivory Tower guys at Bradley are "projecting" $14 million a year in "new" business, $560,000,000 over 40 years, that's real prosperity. The planning seems to have including the management of money quoted above; planning which appears to be lacking. And discipline? Hard work, no doubt, but one out of three seldom produces a winner.
I stand by the biblical parable. In Peoria, we haven't been able to really complete much of what we've started with taxpayer funding. The zoo still lacks $5 million for a parking lot (looks like it may not be needed) and a new exotic zoo entrance from Prospect. The Children's Playhouse is years behing schedule and half funded, the banks seem to be caught between "a rock and hard spot" with another partially taxpayer funded project on the Riverfront, Cub's closed, the $27 million new libraries are going to be a bigger drag on property taxpayers than anticipated as more dead bodies are uncovered, the Gateway Building is defunct, the city is broke, #150 is still suspect as to quality of product produced while taking 60 per cent of our property taxes, participation in the federal food-stamp participants swelled from 26 million in 2007 to 33 million in 2009 and we still don't know what the sewer and public water upgrades are going to cost the taxpayer.
Rest assured, people are going to have less money to spend on future planning.
And Peoria County Administrator and a majority of the County Board want a new $54 million dollar Taj Mahal taxpayer funded County Nursing Home to house 160 Medicaid people who also benefit from other taxpayer dollars to pay the 100 thousands' of bureaucrats running the system.
Many believe that Jesus with his common sense will return to earth. Today would not be too soon.
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