If you go back to when this project was first cooked up by Scott Kennedy and the Redevelopment Agency, the amount wasted on this boondoggle was more like $1.5 million. Chances are we will never know the true cost. SCRAP efforts to get a definitive statement on funds spent to date were not answered.

Since we have such a budget crisis, let's save a bundle and eliminate the Redevelopment Agency. It was formed to manage earthquake recovery and hung on to address blight. Ummmmmmm. We still have two earthquake holes left 16 YEARS after the earthquake!

Talk about stretching out a government job at public expense! Other "accomplishments" of the RDA were putting up change machines on Pacific Ave so no one can sit down, tearing out a parking lot to rebuild a parking lot, and some yuppy, swanky alleyways. The RDA also privatized two public sitting planters because "the wrong kind of people were sitting down."

We have a planning dept. and a zoning commission, and a Downtown Commission. We don't need a redevelopment agency (except perhaps on paper as a funding magnet).

Fire Ceil Cerillo and 9/10ths of her staff. They were the dept. most responsible for attempting to foist this Coast Hotel Corporate giveaway on us. It only makes sense to make the cuts in the dept. which brought this to us. Maybe then the City can begin to dig itself out of the financial hole it has dug for itself.