Dear Editor,

The SPLOST dollars follow a much needed community center and are not building specific. So, why not take $700,000 and build a new community center?

The grants that are out there are not awarded, so in all fairness there is no guarantee that it will cost Hogansville nothing.

There is a huge probability that in fact it will cost citizens since the cost to rebuild the Royal is only an estimate and not a hard dollar quote.

There is also no plan or budget to cover operating cost or utilities in the numbers provided by the Royal Group, so I guess they will run off of generators.

I’m sure citizens wouldn’t mind selling the Royal to a private investor and applying that money to a new city hall or even gifting it to a nonprofit.

However we aren’t looking for another sod farm to “stink” up our town.

It’s very interesting that we aren’t arguing to spend the money on a building that would much better meet the needs of our citizens, such as the old elementary school.

The PNC bank deal has been done in the shadows, and it has been stated that the PNC will only be gifted if we move forward with restoring the Royal.

Why are there any strings with this gift? Who really benefits from it and what will this “gift” cost us down the road?

The people heading up this Royal restoration have misled our citizens and our council by saying that they have every dime covered, when in fact they have nothing without the $700,000 community center SPLOST funds.

The programs that they are trying to offer have already been offered twice in the past 10 years and have both failed.

Thanks for your very colorful article, but a certain group whining shouldn’t warrant you or the paper you write for a platform to blast your opinion. Stop trying to force this down our throats because if it was so great then a private investor would have already snatched it up.

It’s a bad investment for an already strapped city and the citizens who live here.

I personally do not like every decision the council makes, but they, like many others, are seeing that the numbers do not add up here.

I commend Council woman Theresa Strickland for digging her heels in and not hurrying a vote.

I think our council has a heart for our community and want to do what’s best for our citizens now, and for our children in the future.

Jason Miles

Hogansville