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OUR VIEW $1 million off the price tag. But, is the city really just playing a numbers game? While the city has received some indication that much of the required lumber for the project might be donated or sold at cost from nearby manufacturers, there is no deal on hand formalizing any kind of agreement. On that count, it’s counting chickens before the hatch. The stage, in the current bid, is now just a shell, with no curtain and no lighting. Without those two items, the stage will be useless for any kind of theatrical production. Other changes made, include scaling back the design and construction of the entrance and opting for less decorative mouldings in parts of the building. Even the original bids totalling more than $5 million left a number of things out. The costly Vortex system for controlling stage props was never included in the bidding process as it is planned to be had on a lease-purchase plan. But that system will total more than $100,000. Apart from the stage seating, very little furniture will be in the meeting rooms. Mayor Day hopes local civic organizations or businesses will step up to “sponsor” various rooms by outfitting them with furniture. Hopefully some guidelines will be in place so we don’t wind up with a hodge podge of furnishings in our civic center. Talk of having computerized “smart boards” in the center’s meeting rooms has also died out. Eventually, most of these things will have to be purchased by someone in order to make the civic center fully functional. We still think a nice civic center is a wonderful idea, and we applaud the work of the civic center task force for taking its charge seriously and doing what it could under its constraints.
Just don’t be surprised if the final cost of the civic center is significantly greater than $3.5 million and change.
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