LETTERS EDITOR TO THE

Disappointed

I would like to thank all those who came to the Property Owners Association board meeting Thursday, emailed, called or stopped by to discuss my proposal to purchase the ArkMo property from the POA.

Before I submitted my proposal, I spent hundreds of hours walking the property, talking with engineers and officials, developing plans, running numbers and preparing my proposal materials. I was willing to put my personal and professional reputation and my financial future on the line to move forward with a quality development for that property, vacant since purchased in 2000.

I was shocked that the POA would entertain an offer emailed five hours before the meeting by a phantom buyer who would not stand up in a public meeting or even allow their name to be revealed.

The board chairman referenced an appraisal they had from 2014. One thing I learned in my almost 20 years as a state-certified appraiser, is that without a ready-willing-and-able buyer, an appraisal is merely a pile of paper.

A board member discussed how if the POA were financing the project, they would in essence be the developer. Not so. The POA would merely be the bank, collecting the principal and interest payments. I would have been the person spending 12-16 hours, seven days a week working on the project. I would have been the person paying for the flood study, the surveying, the engineering, the soils testing, all of the Health Department and other agency approvals. I would have been the person walking the property for hours and hours determining the best way to divide it, while still maintaining the beauty and ecological attributes of that property so that potential purchasers would have a quality environment in which to live. I would have been the person developing the covenants to protect the land and ensure that the buildings were built with energy efficient and healthy building materials and were properly sited.

Throughout the assessment increase vote last year, COO Tom Judson kept talking about how tired all of the POA buildings are. My top thought after leaving the meeting was that there is just no vision to see Bella Vista as a modern and forward-thinking community where different residential ideas and unique architecture is welcomed.

I am disappointed at the impetus to have Bella Vista stay tired and outdated. Linda Lloyd Bella Vista

A simple message

OK, Trump electors, it comes to this: “You bear the blame, and you share the shame!”

It doesn’t get clearer than that. J. R. “Doc” Irwin Bella Vista

Liquor license question

Why is the Propery Owners Association liquor license in the personal name of the business development director, Tommy Lee, and not in the POA?

It seems to me it should be in the name of the POA, and we wouldn’t have had that problem with the Alcohol Beverage Control Board. Millie Foree Bella Vista

Shirking responsibility

We elect our public officials to represent us and guide us to a better future. We elect enough of them to our national, state, county and city offices to make sure that there is an adequate number within the group to posses the educational qualifications, intelligence, experience and expertise to accomplish the mission assigned to them. In most cases we pay them enough to compensate for the work they do. That’s the way it has always been in the past.

However, it is now become a common practice for these public officials to shirk their responsibilities and hire an outside consultant to do the planning and take on the duties that these officials were elected to do. These consultants can paint a rosy picture that does not include where the money for all the great ideas is going to come from.

At the end of the day the pipe dream dwindles to nothing because the public officials realize they can’t find the funds to accomplish what the consultant has proposed. With this failure, the public officials can avoid the blame because they will say it was the consultant’s fault and they had nothing to do with it. At this point, all the taxpayers have to show for their hard earned money is a highly paid consultant laughing his way back to a bank in Chicago, Dallas or New York City. Jim Parsons Bella Vista