October 24, 2006: The LCCC Battleground 6

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October's high Fall in Lancaster. The trees are usually either at or just past full color throughout the late parts of the month and brisk days turn to quite cool as we head into November. By this time in 2006, the first fights were fought over the construction of this Convention Center which I've discussed for six day now. And they were delaying the activities which had already been slow to start as a result of earlier court fights.

Original budgets for this project were drawn up in the early part of the decade and contracts were let as interest rates plummeted. Construction and commodity prices as a result of the low interest rate boom had not yet exploded. It was a sweet time to plan a big project like this. But by 2006, after years of wrestling critics led by those rogue commissioners had pushed the project through delays into a time when both prices and interest rates were soaring.

So their actions, while not yet successful in any court order to stop the process, were successful in pushing it into viciously more expensive waters. And still... here on October 24... the machines worked by day, and their operators wondered by night if those commissioners would have locks on all the gates by daybreak. And in County Commission offices a determined obsession seemed to have enveloped those two commissioners and their small cadre of supporters to either stop or strangle the project at all costs...

Cost passed increasingly along to taxpayers.