SELLING OUT

 

Kudos to City Councilmen James Taylor and Derwin Montgomery for voting against selling the LJVM Coliseum, a public owned property, to Wake Forest University, a private non-profit institution.

The city has been trying to give Wake the city owned coliseum since their first basketball game, at the old memorial coliseum over 50 years ago.

 Although the Winston Salem Foundation owned and donated the property where the new coliseum now rests, the residents of Forsyth County voted to build the coliseum and our tax dollars were used for construction.

There are so many things wrong with this deal: as a “non-profit” educational institution Wake takes the coliseum off public tax rolls just as the ballpark, and increasing our taxes. The city will retire this debt to incur a greater one for the residents.

Regardless of the faith of those believing Wake will abide by any stipulation LJVM is now being called the WS Entertainment Sports Complex, reducing the meaning of the name.  And with selling naming rights, stay tuned for BB&T court basketball.

There is no guarantee that a private institution will allow certain public events to be held at the coliseum if they buy it. They may not want graduation services for our public High Schools, or it may not like certain religious events or even community events such as Juneteenth to be held. What will happen if there is a natural disaster and a large population of residents need to be sheltered. Where will they go?

There was a bait and switch with WSSU, a public educational institution that has been in this community 120 years, to throw some off the track of this bad deal. The city should do everything possible to aid in this public institution in acquiring the public Bowman Gray Stadium.

When LJVM was built it was said to be too small, but the city decided not to increase it while it was being built; now they want us to take this tax burden for them.

Our coliseum should not be sold, and any discussion must be public with public participation. This needs to be on the ballot in November for a public referendum.