Editor:

Between 2001 and 2002, the city of Daphne reluctantly agreed to purchase a parking lot that surrounds the Jubilee Square Shopping Center on Highway 90. This was done by the previous administration.

The cost of the lot was $13 million and the document stated the interest rate at 9.75  percent, to be paid over 25 or more years. Prepayment of the loan/bond balance was not allowed.

Payment of this land was to be taken from the sales taxes generated by this shopping center, and payments were to be made monthly.

In the last five years, the sales taxes have almost never been enough to cover those monthly payments. At the present time, the city of Daphne is almost $1 million in arrears. Payments made since the document was signed total about $3.2 million, but should have been well over $4 million if the sales taxes were at when they were presented by the developer.

This onerous contract was pushed on Daphne residents by the mayor of those times who presided over the city council.

He is also the ex-mayor who is presently running again here in 2008 to “straighten out Daphne finances.”

The Jubilee parking lot should be the only remembrance we have of this man. Why should anyone vote for any more of this skullduggery ever again?

Rod Drummond

Daphne