Great. Just great. Our farsighted Vancouver City Council publicly (but not officially) announces that they would not support a 5 percent admissions tax to be used for building a capital public improvement — a civic baseball stadium. In response to this, a single county commissioner, Marc Boldt, flip-flops his support for said baseball stadium, thus effectively killing the proposal and ending a chance for professional baseball in our region for another decade.
But wait. Only hours after the county commissioners did their public dirty work, the city council says it was all a misunderstanding. They think an admissions tax is really a great thing. Just not for what it was planned for.
You see, an admissions tax that would go away after the building debt was paid is unacceptable, but an admissions tax that can stay forever is just fine.
Clearly, the city council thinks the voters have short memories, being as we are only a few weeks past the election and they are all have jobs for another two years. But my memory is a bit longer. When elected officials can’t be honest with the public about their views and have no ability to stick to their principals, it’s something that I am going to remember for a long time.
