Deal or No Deal

Anyone watching the last council meeting should look real hard at what happened with the walmart agreement and ask some questions. We must go to the beginning of the TIF story so that many can follow along.

The council in a 5-2 Vote, voted to approve a TIF district and bonding for the TIF.
Remember that it was a heated debate from two camps. The speakers filled the room for a public hearing that night and in the end the majority voted to make an Economic Development Move.

The detractors, whom had a common theme came out to A) bash Walmart first and then bash the majority for voting, because they saw nothing in writing from Walmart and that we were trusting them at their word and that was not good enough for them.

Mr Marcoux then proceeded to ask the Walmart reps for something in writing so that the detractors would feel better about the project ( even though they voted against it) and Walmart came back with what I will admit was "boiler plate" agreements which basically said "here you go, here it is in writing that we want to come and build a super center"

Also in the agreement was the fact that WALMART would give us $500K of the 1 MIL that they pledged UPFRONT and as you might expect it had a clause that said for any reason, Walmart does not move forward or lets say planning board did not give them approvals, that they wanted their money back- Does this surprise anyone?? If the project does not go forward-Walmart will not be giving us any money and because they were going to give us $500K upfront to get the project moving, it was subject to them coming to town. ( That's a no brainer folks, Walmart has plenty of money but they don't give it away.)

The next argument was that by signing this contract, Walmart controlled the project and that if they decided not to come they could still tell us what do and when to do it.
Lets think about that for a second. Do you honestly believe that Walmart has nothing better to do and if it does not come to Derry that they would say -Hey just for laughs lets play around awhile and mess with the town of Derry, lets give them a hard time and tie them up for years to come. Come on folks- they got better things to do

So at the meeting, when the naysayers keep picking and picking, they ( Walmart) said "you are the ones who requested something in writing and if you don't like it, don't sign it

Councilor Coyle made the motion to not sign the document and instead use 500K of taxpayers dollars from unreserved fund balance to get the ball rolling.

Is Walmart still coming- I think they are and as reported in a local paper I'm 99.9% sure they will.

Will they give us the 1Mil as promised- Yes the will once everything is in place and agreements are signed

The toughest part to swallow is this: 1) We just went around in a big circle- First the minority wants an agreement and in the end doesn't want an agreement- This cost the town a very valuable 2 months at the very least. We could of started this 2 months ago. ( Waste, I hate waste)

2) Instead of using $500K of Walmart money, we will use $500K of taxpayers money from unreserved fund balance- which by the way is dangerously edging below the state recommended minimum. ( this could effect future bond ratings)

Don't get me wrong here, we need to get the project going right away but all I see right now is Howie Mandell saying deal or no deal and in the briefcase from Walmart was 500K and we told them we don't want that case

Hopefully, we learned a valuable lesson here!