Crestwood High School announces its second marking period Honor Roll for 2015/2016

Letter to the Editor: ‘Dr. Black’ allowed young patient to see past color

<p>If someone owed you $1.7 million and it actually belonged to someone else, would you say, oh, that&#8217;s OK, you don&#8217;t have to pay it back? Didn&#8217;t think so.</p><p>Then again, you&#8217;re not Luzerne County, which is actually considering forgiving that huge debt. And it wouldn&#8217;t be the first time.</p><p>Get this. The Greater Wilkes-Barre Chamber of Business &amp; Industry borrowed that $1.7 million from the county&#8217;s Office of Community Development for its Innovation Center @ Wilkes-Barre on South Main Street. Now a private developer, Red Talon Group 1 LLC, wants to buy it but can&#8217;t because of the unpaid loan, which is public money. So the chamber&#8217;s business &#8220;leaders&#8221; pitched a plan to the county: Forgive the loan, and we&#8217;ll use the sales proceeds to pay back other loans we owe you, the <a href="https://www.timesleader.com/news/local/523783/luzerne-county-council-to-discuss-chamber-loan-forgiveness" target="_blank">Times Leader reported</a>.</p><p>They must take us for fools.</p><p>Try using that skewed logic at your bank. Hey, PNC bank manager, would you please forgive my car loan? Then I&#8217;ll sell it and have some more money to pay toward my mortgage. What do you think?</p><p>Red Talon Group also plans to purchase the First National Bank Building on Public Square. I&#8217;m all for developers investing in the city, but they&#8217;ll more than likely be getting generous tax breaks to do so. On top of that, why should taxpayers bail out the chamber by forgiving a $1.7 million loan, which is most certainly not chump change?</p><p>Because, Chamber President Wico Van Genderen said, if the county doesn&#8217;t cooperate, the sale will not go through, according to a published report. And whose fault is that? The county&#8217;s or the deadbeat chamber&#8217;s, which reportedly also owes $126,600 in delinquent real estate taxes on the innovation center?</p><p>At Tuesday&#8217;s county council work session, Councilman Harry Haas asked Van Genderen this: What are the guarantees that jobs will materialize? The chamber president responded, &#8220;Those jobs are very real.&#8221;</p><p>Where have we heard that before?</p><p>In addition to the chamber loan, the county&#8217;s community development office also loaned $6 million to a politically connected nonprofit group called CityVest to develop the former Hotel Sterling. That $6 million wasn&#8217;t forgiven. It was forgotten.</p><p>CityVest secured the loan after promising, among other things, that many jobs would be created.</p><p>The only jobs that materialized were for some consultants and then for the wrecking crews hired to demolish the unsteady building before it toppled on the heads of passing pedestrians or vehicles.</p><p>CityVest blithely walked away from the project and its whopping $6 million loan, saying it ran out of money. Just like that.</p><p>In 2014, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development ordered Luzerne County to replenish its community development loan fund by $10 million, saying seven projects that received loans did not create jobs, according to the Times Leader&#8217;s news coverage.</p><p>Only seven? Only $10 million in loans that didn&#8217;t deliver? The county contested the directive.</p><p>The community development office, under the leadership of Andrew Reilly, seems to have a pretty poor record of doling out generous loans and then just shrugging its shoulders when they&#8217;re not paid back.</p><p>Reilly said the $1.7 million the chamber wants forgiven isn&#8217;t part of the still-pending HUD &#8220;inquiry.&#8221; He said some borrowers did pay back some loans, which reduced what HUD wants put back into the county fund from $10 million to $8.7 million. Good job, Andy.</p><p>Reilly said that even without the $1.7 million the chamber owes, the community development office still has $16 million in its fund. &#8220;It will be $1.7 million we don&#8217;t have, but we haven&#8217;t turned people away because of a lack of funds.&#8221; How cavalier.</p><p>Who needs $17.7 million when you still have $16 million to gamble on projects that may or may not produce jobs?</p><p>It just never ends.</p><style>
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<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>Zeroing In</p><p>Betty Roccograndi</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Betty Roccograndi, a former Times Leader reporter and award-winning journalist, is a freelance columnist. Reach her by email at broccograndi@gmail.com.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Zeroing In: End Luzerne County’s foolish track record of loan forgiveness