Group in way of Clovis progress

Once again situations in this community seem to amaze me.

After reading a newspaper article on the Hotel Clovis, I once again wonder from what planet a handful of citizens come.

We are presented with someone who wants to invest more than $9 million in a project eradicating an eyesore in our community, and one of our misguided commissioners, whom I presume is proud of his vote and those who call themselves Patriots, object and try to stifle progress in the name of cost savings and fairness.

I understand they believe they are helping, but they are not.

In the first place, if this commissioner is worried about this project being unfair, maybe he should have put his $10 million at risk sometime in the past decades to fix up the hotel. Then this discussion would be a moot point.

The facts that are being presented by opposition are misguided and misleading. What facts should be of interest to the public are as follows:

1. The million-plus dollars the city is guaranteeing will be far less than that figure because of federal money replacement.

2. This project will be an income stream for the city of Clovis, Curry County and the state of New Mexico — from the day of construction on into the future, through gross receipts, property taxes and employment. (This project will employ 150 construction people to complete, and others after.)

3. Then there is the matter of materials, which will boost the suppliers’ income and our tax base.

4. This project will clean up an eyesore and alleviate a liability that the Clovis community already owns.

5. We spend millions to create jobs in this area and here is another opportunity to do such, and the opponents are fighting over $1 million that will be repaid many times over.

6. The city has spent money for years studying what to do with this derelict building, and nothing has been accomplished.

7. If this project is scraped, we have a financial liability because we encouraged this group to proceed with the project and they have spent hundreds of thousands of their own dollars on this project already.

What I find discerning is that when the water issue came up this same group objected and cost the city and county tens of thousands of taxpayers’ dollars to find out from the election results that this small group of naysayers was a minority. Now they will cost the taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars more. We elected the commission to represent us on these issues, so why are we second-guessing them on every issue? If you don’t like the decisions your commissioner makes, vote them out. Stop wasting our money on elections just because your small minority group doesn’t agree.

And for the commissioner, maybe you should ask the people of your district how they feel before speaking on their behalf.