I am writing to you to express my concern with your Jan. 24 editorial(“Goshen voters get to decide center’s future”).

I once thought it would be best to have a public referendum on the Goshen Community Center. For this it needed to have the Goshen City Council vote in favor of the referendum.

Concerned citizens were aware that the GCC group was putting a lot of pressure on certain council members using the tactic that all it wanted was to put it to a vote, knowing it could win approval if a vote was held. In other words, the deck had been stacked.

I don’t blame Brett Weddell for his decision to vote in favor. I do think he should have investigated and found out what the group was trying to do. In other words, I think he was used.

Since the beginning of this project, I have been trying to get the GCC to tell the truth about the cost to a taxpayer. The figures it is using say a home valued at $107,200 would cost $84 per year. This is not true. Using the $45,000 homestead deduction and a $3,000 mortgage deduction, the true tax cost would be about $50 more per year. Again, I have told GCC members this and they still use the figures given to them by their Indianapolis attorneys.

I am not against the school having a bond issue for $10 million to build a new pool and use the old areas for the music program as long as it is on present school property. Goshen does not need three swimming pools, three or four basketball courts and an indoor soccer area. We just had two new centers open in Goshen that are taxpaying ventures that could be competing with a tax-exempt competitor.

Ed Bradford

Goshen