Letters

A A A Comments Thursday, Dec 2 1999

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Finally, in your article, you say that there were other offers that generated higher yields to the district. There were two considerations when the decision was made to accept Arnel Development's offer to build a Wal-Mart on the site; a consultant advised us on the viability of the other offers and our commitment to the city of Huntington Beach. The current configuration will offer the best sales-tax return to the city, which in turn benefits all the residents. If the property is developed with houses, the city gets only the property-tax revenues with additional homes to provide services to.

I hope that the voters take time to become informed on the issues and not rely on one-sided articles such as yours.

Pam Walker president, Ocean View School Board Huntington Beach Juan Rockefeller, finance analyst in theOC Weekly DataLab, responds: Ms. Walker, we'll make you a deal: we'll take the $7.5 million you say you'd get from an outright sale of the Crest View School site and invest it with the modest expectation that we'll average 10 percent per year. At the end of 65 years, we'll give you half of the principal and interest income, leaving you with almost $1 billion—compared to your paltry $68 million—to divide among the residents of Huntington Beach. Now who do you think they'd rather have in charge of the district's finances?

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