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THESE
Glaring Facts Should Not Be Forgotten by the
Taxpayers
Fact: For more than 20 years the WWII Veterans
Memorial Stadium has been neglected and sits in decay,
unusable to the 70,000 residents of Lawrence.
Fact: For 20 years the residents of Lawrence
have been told by elected officials that the Lawrence
WWII Veterans Memorial Stadium could not be fixed because
there is no money for such a big project.
Fact: We may never be able to go back 20 years
to find out where all the stadium money granted to
Lawrence wound up.
Fact: For the last 5 years we can.
Fact: The City has been GETTING money to fix
up the stadium as far back as 1997.
Fact: Many of the grants we received had other
grants attached to them. This means, once the project is
begun and progress can be shown, more money would
automatically be granted to the city to finish the fix
up.
Fact: The City never spent the money from
those original grants on stadium repair, instead, Mayor
Dowling and CD Director Bill Luster put that money into
bank accounts.
Fact: They later raided those accounts to pay for
other pet projects.
Fact: One account with $210,000 in it has been
sitting in an account since 1998, the year Lawrence
received it from the Federal Government to fix the
stadium.
Fact: Former Mayor Dowling signed an agreement with
a private developer (South West Equities) to use half of
that grant ($100,000) to knock down the old Essem Hot Dog
Plant. The developer needs the site demolished so he can
build a number of single family homes. Homes he will sell
for more than $200,000 each.
Fact: If the city pays for the demolition of the
plant, the developer pays less to build the project and
increases his profit margin after sale.
Fact: Mayor Dowling promised the rest of the money
in that stadium account to Lawrence Community Works to
demolish the old Saint Lawrence's School. Community works
is building a community center there.
Fact: We lost at least $500,000 dollars on a
SURF grant specifically awarded by the federal government
to fix the stadium.
Fact: We lost that grant because Mayor Dowling and
Bill Lustre never bothered accepted the grant once it was
awarded.
Fact: That's $750,000 of stadium renovation
money GONE! Poof!
Fact: Almost one million dollars has been used by
the previous administration to continue to fund programs
that had no money left to fund them. This means, programs
that were supposed to stop being funded continued to be
funded at the expense of the stadium renovation project.
Fact: Mayor Mike Sullivan now says he is not
going to honor Dowling's commitment to use stadium money
for demolition of the Essem Site.
Fact: He has not said as of yet if the city
will fund that demolition another way.
Fact: Members of the City Council have found open
bank accounts with some money still in them.
Fact: Several members of the City Council are
coming forward to force the money in those bank accounts
(left over from the Dowling administration) to be used
immediately on a real stadium renovation project.
Fact: Had the stadium been usable over the last 5
years, Lawrence would have received millions of dollars
in tax revenue each year it was operational.
Fact: That additional money could have helped us
avert the current budget crisis.
Fact: Nobody Seems to Care.