OUR OPINION: Bike-rental idea for Greenway could roll
April 12, 2012 at 5:50 pm in Grand Forks Herald
The city, park and school governments in Grand Forks run skating rinks, swimming pools, playgrounds, band programs, interscholastic sports, golf courses, disc-golf courses and soon, a multi-million dollar wellness center. Assuming no private concessionaire steps forward, is a small bike-rental operation that much of a stretch? Continue Reading
“a multi-million dollar wellness center.”
1. The wellness center is in direct competition with existing local business, and should never have been supported with tax money.
2. WHAT IS THE FUNDING SOURCE for the bike rental? At first, the lie was that they weren’t going to use tax money, but that was exposed by the TV coverage. We learned that money would be legally but unethically siphoned off of the motor vehicle fuels tax pool.
“So, for $8 an hour or $6 for a half-hour, visitors and their children…”
3. Who is the intended target of this scheme? Money intended to fix roads in order to support motor vehicle traffic mis-spent on what amounts to a tourism venture seems to be a poor and perhaps illegal use of a valuable resource and another example of over-reaching local Government’s abuse of the tax-payer as well as the tax system.
First Guess: The bikes will be low-bid Chinese junk, and will be stolen, vandalized. or otherwise broken in the first season. Who’s paying the upkeep? Who is going to perform the maintenance? Who will assure that the bicycle is in safe riding condition when the next person checks it out? Will the City be sued for neglect when some Ya-Hoo rides one into the side of a Corolla, or a fire plug, or hits a curb and has a Gravity Incident? What is the City’s liability insurance exposure with this mess?
One way or another, the taxpayer is going to get handed the bill.
LET PRIVATE ENTERPRISE DEAL WITH THIS.
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“By Thursday, the story had drawn 80 comments”
24 of them were Spearman’s. I wouldn’t exactly say this story lit up the board.
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If it’s such a great idea, why doesn’t the Herald foot the bill? Think of it as community service.
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The bike season is too short here to even consider this as a viable concept.
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