By Dave Schmidt of THE MERCER COUNTY OUTLOOK

February 15, 2010

I guess the boys and girls at the City of Celina said, “let’s fire-up the guy at the Outlook today.” They sure are giving me plenty of things to write about. This is almost like a regular routine for us, they do something stupid and I write about it. In the past I would ask them to give me some comment on the matter and they would not reply. So this time I am cutting out that part of the process, if they don’t care about answering I don’t care either. I’ve been told they don’t think anyone reads the Outlook.

In a recent article in the *Celina Daily Standard - Celina may seek financing to relocate part of Schunck - City Planning and Community Development Director wants to spend up to $100,000 to make Sugar Street Hill into "nice, big entrance" to West Bank Road. You have got to be kidding me. Why in the name of the Woody Hayes would you do that. Are they done with the boardwalk yet? Do they have all of the funding in place to complete that project? Have they cleaned up the shore line on the West Bank Road? How many entrances do you need to West Bank Road? They can’t even keep the Boardwalk clean of goose stuff. What about that land swap they did earlier to keep the wetlands quota for the West Bank area, how has all of that worked for the improvement of the West Bank.

I will give the City kids some credit they are now running Celina like the big boys do in Washington. According to the Standard article there is now a verbal agreement in place with the property owner and will be made formal later in the spring. They are already dumping dirt on the new property. Oh yeah, who approved that and what are the terms that everybody agreed to? Didn’t they tell us they had a verbal agreement on the Versa-Pak location? That deal went smoothly.

Who is actually running the City of Celina, the City Council, the Safety Service Director or the Planning and Community Development Director , your guess is as good as mine. Looks like this bunch doesn’t care how they operate. Didn’t they just hire an employee several months ago without having council approval in place…shhhh, don’t bring that up again they never did tell us how that ended.

According to the Standard article “the relocation initiative is part of a redevelopment campaign that will enhance the aesthetics of the area.” They have a plan? When did that all happen, let’s see a copy of that. I thought the residents of Celina voted against having a plan in place several years ago. Oh I forgot the City doesn’t care what you think.

Since the issue is also that Sugar Street Hill is a safety concern, put a guard rail up on West Bank Road and close it down. Tear up the old part of the road and then you can plant your grass seed. You want to do changes on the West Bank, give it a new name. Most out of town folks think you are talking about the occupied shores of Palestine. How about sell the naming rights for a $1,000,000 and you can finance the Boardwalk.

Since the folks at the City love buying and trading properties we need to buy them a game of Celina “Monopoly”. That way they can play it all the time and they won’t have to spend any tax money doing it…hey, I’ll even donate the board game.

You don’t need to be spending $100,000 on this project.

*Celina Daily Standard - Celina may seek financing to relocate part of Schunck