our treat

Going dutch on the medcon? "Naw, let us treat", said the BOCC. "Well, thank you very much", said MMPI and Vornado REIT. "You're welcome", said Mr.s Hagan, Dimora and Jones. "It's the least we could do. After all, we've been wanting someone to come in and save Our Town". "What about Mr. Jackson, our server", said Mr. Falanga. "Oh, don't worry about him, he'll step and fetch it real fast if we give him a big tip". "Yeah, you know this whole thing is about tipping well; tip the servers, the cabbies, the bellhops, even tip the laundress and the shoeshine guy. Soon Cleveland's economy will be humming along like a big ole diesel truck! Good work guys! Boy, I knew Cleveland was the place for this new mart - ya'll have the stupidest taxpayers anywhere in the nation and you sure do have 'em on a short leash". "Yeah, said Mr. Hagan, I just always tell them, this is representative democracy - that always takes care of any upstarts or naysayers. Then there's Mr. Nance. He's a real charmer and has everyone mesmerized even though he's real good at not letting anyone know anything about the deal". "You know, said Mr. Falanga, we have marts in all the major markets in the US and Cleveland is the first city, where ya'll offered to buy it for us. Thank you so much."

Works like this - we pay for dinner and we serve it up nice and juicy ($1 billion over 20 years) - they eat, they pick up the tip ($20 million).

Boy this is real innovation. A first of its kind. Will it set a new standard for public/private partnerships? Is this the sort of gentility we had in mind? We taxpayers sure are flush with cash. Breaking news: One of nation's poorest cities with failing infrastructure, foreclosure out the wazoo taxes it's citizen to help bail out Vornado REIT. Cuyahoga County straps itself into more indebtedness for 20 year term.

Jim Nichols of the Pee Dee asks the billion dollar question: Why wouldn't taxpayers own the Medical Mart? [1]

I am still scratching my head. Given no information on the return on investment for county taxpayers other than "bellhops will earn and spend" I can only resort to the old WAG (wild assed guess). I guess we're just not smart enough to understand these high level machinations.