As a Fruita business owner and a member of steering committee for the Fruita Recreation Center, I am appalled with misrepresentation by both the city management and the group promoting this uncontainable effort to approve a 33 percent tax increase to build in Fruita recreation center.

Much of the effort to get this recreation center has been to provide a senior center for Fruita seniors. Call it misrepresentation by omission, but not once during the 1 1⁄2 years of attending these meetings did the city manager mention that a group called the Lower Valley Seniors had plans to build a 7,000 square foot senior center at no cost to taxpayers. So I ask: Why is the city asking taxpayers to nearly $40 million over the next 30 years to fund a recreation center for seniors when they knew of this group’s existing plans to build a senior center that would be free to seniors and free to voters?

While myself and other committee members agreed and supported the idea of a recreation center for seniors, we did so not knowing this group already had plans of building a free senior center.

The seniors are not getting what they wanted at all but will pay for an elaborate fitness center funded by taxpayers’ dollars with as much space dedicated to the fitness area as our local health club. Why is the government competing with private business?
Everyone in Fruita will pay for this government-run fitness center with additional taxes even if they never use it. To add insult to injury is the fact that Fruita residents will be required to pay over $700 a year in additional user fees for a family to use the center. This is something the proponents of this issue are not telling voters.

Voting “No” on issue A will not kill the idea of a recreation center but will only force the city to be more fiscally responsible and revise the plan. Vote “No” on Issue A.

JOSEPH MILLER
Fruita

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