Letters to the Editor: Holiday ice-skating rink a waste of taxpayers’ money

I filed an information request with the Glendale City Clerk’s office asking for the daily revenue reports on the temporary “Holiday on Ice” ice-skating rink by City Hall.

You remember. This is the boondoggle championed by Mayor Ara Najarian that spent $500,000 of our (your) taxpayer money to install an ice skating rink at City Hall in hopes of generating $150,000 in revenue so the final taxpayer cost would only be $350,000.

Those who objected to the expenditures were labeled “grinches” by Najarian because we think spending that kind of money on such a project is obscene in light of the multitude of things in Glendale that need financial attention.

Aram Adjemian, a very nice records administration analyst with the city, sent me 24 days’ worth of daily financial reports on the ice rink. The dates included were Nov. 22 through Dec. 16.

During that period 2,114 people purchased tickets and rented skates for a total of $56,874.14 in revenue. There are more than 203,000 people living in Glendale. Just 1% of its residents went ice skating over those 24 days, assuming they were all Glendale residents.

With an average daily revenue of $2,370 (some weekdays as few as five people and $227.36 in revenue) it is hard to believe they are going to get close to Najarian’s $150,000 revenue projection by the end of the skating-rink’s operation, Jan. 6.

I bring this up because I am tired of politicians, and make no mistake Ara Najarian is a politician, making bold unrealistic assumptions and statements about spending our tax money, and when those assumptions don’t come close to being correct they hope we will all forget about them when election time rolls around.

Unfortunately, all too often, history proves the politicians to be correct. Maybe this time it will be different?

Jim Kussman
Glendale

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Re: “The Whiteboard Jungle: A would-be Dickensian speech from an imaginary President Trump,” Dec. 28.

I have but two hopes for columnist Brian Crosby. The first would be that he does not let his opinions pollute the instruction that he is giving the students in his classroom.

The second would be that he is not a math teacher, as his statement that this is the end of the second decade in the century is incorrect. Given there was not a year zero, decades and centuries begin with years ending in “1” and end in those ending with “0” (zero). Therefore, he is one year short.

Donald Cameron
Glendale