Is City Council Fiscally Irresponsible?

The Council is set to approve $1/2 Million dollars for the restoration of the Grace Heritage Center in downtown Georgetown at their next meeting.

What is the Georgetown Heritage Center? It is a church building given to the City in 1992.

The City uses it as an event center to host weddings among other activities.

Here is the cost estimate.

Less than two years ago, the cost estimate was $290,000. The costs have increased in the interim and the scope of the project has increased.

Notice that about $200,000 in bonds are to be sold to pay for this restoration.

Remember less than three months ago, the city had $1.9M in unallocated funds in the council's "slush fund". Where was the request for the $491,550 for the Grace Heritage Center? Why was this not put into the lists of possible uses of the $1.9M?

Instead the city is going to issue another $200,000 in debt.

The city's sales tax receipts are running several hundred thousand dollars above budget for 2017. Why not use that surplus instead of issuing more debt?

Adendum 7/15/2017
The city has leased Grace Heritage Church to Preservation Georgetown (recently know as the Heritage Society of Georgetown). This is a non-profit group in Georgetown who recently celebrated 40 years. Preservation Georgetown rents out the venue to people to get married and have other events, and Preservation Georgetown gets to keep the profit from those events.