2016 Committee Continues Enron Accounting re: Athlete’s Village
As reported in the Chicago Tribune, the 2016 Committee reluctantly confirms the real proce for the Olympic Village is not the $1 billion originally announced, but REALLY $1.18 billion.
…the city intends to create a tax increment financing district for the site to pay for infrastructure costs, including streets and sewer. On Tuesday, Chicago 2016 officials said those costs have not been determined yet, but are likely to be around $100 million. That number had not been disclosed previously, and brings total costs to $1.18 billion…
Asked how this squares with continuous pledges not to use taxpayer money for the games, Chicago 2016 spokesman Patrick Sandusky said, the village infrastructure wouldn’t siphon money from existing tax bases, but would pay for itself. “There’s no village there now, so there are no incremental taxes,” he said.
Repeat after me – taxpayer funds spent or allocated for the Olympic Village: $86 million for site purchase, $11 million for demolition contracts (2 politically connected companies), $1 million for site security, $100 million for “infrastructure costs” – let’s see, that’s $198 million AND WE HAVEN’T EVEN BEEN AWARDED THE GAMES!
And yet – these funds are not being applied to the Olympic ledger sheet. Just last night (August 4), at the 10th Ward 2016 Community Meeting Dog & Pony Show, Pat Ryan repeated the assertion that “no taxpayer money has been spent on the games or will be spent.” The Sun-Times questions this assertion in an August 5th story headlined:
“City creating TIF to draw $100 million to transform hospital into Olympic Village”
In addition, the 2016 Committee claims their Olympic Village will be for 2,500 units but the Vancouver village with less that half that number of units is almost at a billion dollars RIGHT NOW and the developer went bust and the city must pay the bills to finish it. The same has happened in London and the taxpayers there are on the hook for completing the 2012 Olympic Village.
Bottom line – They are lying about the true costs of the Olympics and lying when they say we are not paying and will not pay for the games.
When you keep expenses off the books in order to disguise the true nature of the project and fudge the numbers to show a profit where there is none – that’s called Enron accounting.
Is it just me, or is anyone else worried that the committee is headed by the owner of one of the world’s largest insurance companies and they can’t get insurance for this pig? Something is very screwed up here.
It’s been pretty obvious that Chicago 2016 are lying based on their very inept inability to honestly show how much the olympics will cost.
Guess what Chicago 2016, we’ve smelled the BS a long, long time ago.