Port of Bremerton Commissioner Cheryl Kincer, in an embarrassing attempt to explain why the agency last week hired a consultant to help plan a $7.1 million building the port doesn’t need and knows it can’t pay for, expressed a rather novel economic philosophy.
“(It’s as if) you have the land and the design to build your dream home, but then you find out you can’t afford it,” she said. “So you go through the process of figuring out how you can build the home.”
Oh? Is that how it’s done? When you discover you can’t afford something, you try to buy it anyway?
Seems like most people confronted with such limitations during difficult economic times would reassess whether the whole dream home thing was such a good idea and maybe postpone or forego the plan altogether.
Then again, Kincer has a distinct advantage most people don’t have in that it isn’t her own money she’s throwing around.
It’s ours.
Beyond that, there seems to be a certain desperation factor at work here, since Kincer is up for re-election in November and she can’t entirely discount the possibility that voters will be just as angry over the port’s recent actions and treat her just as rudely as they did former Commissioner Mary Ann Huntington back in 2007.
Consequently, with their one-vote majority in jeopardy, Kincer and fellow Port Commissioner Bill Mahan seem desperate to do whatever they can to commit the port irrevocably to their pet project, the Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (SEED) incubator, before a new member can come aboard and help the third commissioner, Larry Stokes, impose a little common sense over there
Which is where Kincer’s kooky dream home analogy comes in.
Even though the board has no idea where it will find the money to pay for a new building to house SEED, and despite the fact the port already has a vacant building on the site costing taxpayers $20,000 a month, Kincer demands we build her a brand, new dream home anyway — no matter what.
We have a dream, too. It’s that Kincer, Mahan and SEED would just go away.
