Friday, February 15

December 3, 2006: The LCCC Battleground 7

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The "cost-overruns" were mounting into the millions by year's end of 2006 (You can start this story by clicking here and reading it forward).
A new Lancaster City administration was about to take office into an expanding mess. The rogue county commissioners and their allies that small gaggle of fanatical opponents to the city's planned convention center had pushed the project into the high cost/high interest mess of the decade's middle. Their relentless court actions and delays had forced the entire project to the edge of doom.

Meantime contractors worked to support the facade of the historic Watt & Shand department store which had inspired the entire project. Clever architects had planned to carefully shave this facade free from the decaying interior which was scheduled for demolishment. And as that old structure got razed this facade would be carefully supported by an exterior skeleton of braces until a new hotel could be built behind it.

All of that was planned by the hundreds of thousands of citizens who supported the project, still those two commissioners and their tiny band of obsessed fanatics began another round of court suits. BUT... BUT... as 2006 came to an end, 2007 promised an election year in which all three county commissioners would have to face the voters. Yet not until November. Worse yet, even if they were swept from office they had until the very end of the year to do their worst. 2007 looked to be ugly, especially since those commissioners had a very large weapon to fire.

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