| I know the picture's kinda blurry, kind of like the City's thinking. |
East Laredo has been anticipating the opening of the brand spanking new Haynes Recreation Center just off Clark boulevard in East Laredo. The problem is that whenever it does open, there's going to be trouble in getting the money to staff it. City Manager Carlos Villiarreal was quoted in today's Laredo Morning Times as saying “I’m looking at money we don’t have".
I'm sure that whatever grant the city is using to build it's latest behemoth rec center is very specific about what the money may be used for and apparently it doesn't include staffing. So, why built such a monumental structure in the first place if you're going to be complaining about not having money to hire people to run it? No les occurrio hasta horita? (Did they not think of it until now)?
Not to worry, Villarreal followed his "no money" comment by saying that he would find a way to "add specialty personnel to the recreation center and add a police substation to the East Laredo facility". Whoa, how did we go from no money to adding a police sub station? Well, I guess we can't expect city hall to actually make sense when they tell us things. At least, in this particular case, we can feel good that we're getting something useful like a rec center/police sub-station and not just another multi-million dollar baseball field.
I wonder if some city councilmen will call this a "white elephant" like they do the arena. I can say for a fact that the staffing and operational cost of this rec. center will be over $150,000 per year. That $150,000 per year of operational cost earned the LEA the title "white elephant," and it brings in revenue to the city. Time for a hypocrisy check.
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