LCDC: Sermon on the mount
Coeur d'Alene Press | UPDATED 14 years, 7 months AGO
Dear LCDC, I was wondering if you could answer this question. What's bigger than a football field, taller than a five-story building, and weighs 300,000 million tons of EPA material?
If you answered "Mount LCDC," then you're right. Mt. LCDC sits on the west side of the wonderful Riverstone development that you helped to create. It is that big pile of dirt on the west side of the bike path that comes north under Interstate 90 from the river, and west of the unpaved bus stop parking lot in the city limits. We all remember the mountain of 75-year-old landfill waste that came from the now beautiful Kroc Center, which you also helped to create. I want to know your plans to move Mt. LCDC eyesore off Seltice Way, if any.
In my opinion, the citizens of this county should know that the city of Coeur d'Alene's urban renewal agency is going to finish what it has already committed to, before taking county property tax dollars to build a theme park. If your going to do that, build the theme park out on the prairie for all the people. We the people could even profit from a fairgrounds out there.
You could do what you did for Sorensen school. The Sorensen project is a wonderful example of why you all sit on your urban renewal agency board. What you should not be doing is putting in theme parks and raising property values in that urban renewal district simply to create more income for your agency.
I am well aware of how LCDC tax money is created. I own property in the Lakes district of downtown Coeur d'Alene, where I renovated a blighted structure in 2001 and 2002. Of the $4,200 of property tax that I paid in 2010, LCDC got more than 75 percent of it.
I've got one more question for LCDC. Can I contact the County Assessor's office and have my property removed from your agency's rolls so that the money I pay in taxes goes to the county, where it belongs?
I have some other questions for LCDC, but I don't think they really matter. One concerns whether LCDC first wants to build a parking structure downtown before it builds the theme park, since all the shoppers that shop on Sherman Avenue need parking space going to the park. You should contact the Downtown Association about it.
Just wondering.
TIM MOSGROVE
Coeur d'Alene