Conway’s gift to CCU unfair to taxpayers
A good deal for whom?
A couple of weeks ago our Conway City Council decided to give Coastal Carolina University $500,000 of Conway citizens’ taxpayer dollars.
A call to a Conway city official, regarding the nice contribution that our council bestowed upon CCU, resulted in such answers (excuses) for this contribution of taxpayer funds as “CCU contributes a lot to our city by paying its water bill,” or “the contribution is not $500,000 but $100,000 a year for five years.”
CCU is a profit center - not a charitable organization. The CCU payroll is much better than that of the average wage earner, taxpayer citizen of Conway. Why should Conway taxpayers contribute to the monetary health of CCU? Should the stadium need upgrading for the users of the stadium, why not then raise the cost of tickets for the users of the stadium? A couple of years ago I read in the Sun News that CCU had purchased some land from the state for $1,000,000; maybe they could have used their own excess $1,000,000 to upgrade the CCU stadium. Why not charge full price for golf course use by privileged staff because the $22 they charge is extremely low.
How did this gift come about? Is it possible that CCU lobbied the Conway City Council? Did the council members just wake up one morning and decide to bestow upon CCU half a million dollars so they could “upgrade” their stadium? It’s too bad that the Conway city taxpayers do not have a lobbyist of their own.
If the city council of Conway has an excess of $100,000 a year, the taxes that are levied must be excessive. Possibly taxes could be lowered to give the taxpayers a break rather than line the coffers of CCU. Possibly some of the $100,000 excess taxes could be used to mow the knee-high vegetation on El Bethel Road or the shoulder-high weed patch on the east side of the overpass at U.S. 501, or possibly hire more law enforcement to control the 60-mph log and dump trucks on U.S. 378 and U.S. 701.
These are just some random observations from a working taxpayer.
Elisa Colombo, Conway
This story was originally published October 30, 2015 at 10:02 AM with the headline "Conway’s gift to CCU unfair to taxpayers."