Take Me Out to the Bailout

A Winston-Salem businessman is asking the city to pay an additional $15.7 million to foot the bill for his unfinished stadium after a business deal fell through.  This comes on top of the $12 million the city already gave the project and will mean taking on $12.7 in debt.  You can read about the saga here and here.

Joyce Krawiece, an area resident and long-time FreedomWorks activist, was quoted in both articles and sums up well the outrage felt by taxpayers.

Prim’s getting a deal that most business people couldn’t get, said Joyce Krawiec of Kernersville. Krawiec is the North Carolina grassroots coordinator for Freedom Works, a group that works for lower taxes and smaller government.

“The small business owners of Winston-Salem are footing the bill for these guys,” Krawiec said. “If you are going to bail out one, when do you stop? Why do our elected officials pick and choose winners and losers in the business industry? It’s totally unfair.”

And the council shouldn’t handle the matter on such short notice, she added.

 

Some political activists said that the weekend was not enough time for taxpayers to analyze the deal and be prepared for Monday’s public meeting.

“People who have left town for the weekend — they won’t even know about this until Monday,” said Joyce Krawiec, the state grass-roots coordinator for Freedom Works, an organization that lobbies against taxes and big government. “This is like flying under the radar, hoping they can get it done before people know what’s happened.”

A local Fox affiliate also covered the story, including footage from a city council meeting that Krawiec attended and spoke at.

“He’s hurting like the rest of us are, but I can assure you, there are many of us small business owners who are hurting far more than Mr. Prim, and if you’re going to help him and bail him out, you need to answer to the rest of us,” resident Joyce Krawiec told the council.