Tonight was an important City Council meeting because it had the friendly eminent domain taking order and action on the report from the city manager explaining why it would cost too much too build, too much to operate, and had zoning problems if the facility included the youth center, the VFW post space and the dance hall. He does not want to do the project this way. A large number of dancers showed up for public comment period which occurs before the council does its work. We didn't coordinate who would speak, but there was a good mix of speakers (3 minute limit per person).
In preparation for this meeting I talked to 5 of the 9 councillors today and one yesterday (I guess I am a lobbyist).
My approach was to say to the council this is a great opportunity to have a youth center, have the dance hall which the youth center could use to expand its program, that the dancers could use, and that other community use was possible. Even if it cost an additional $1.5 million (on top of the 7mill allocated) this was a good investment of city money. I am sure that with resource sharing and other creativity the operational cost would be considerably less than (the inflated) $250k the city manager proposed and there would be revenue to offset some of the costs.
The end result was that the council approved the eminent domain and pretty strongly said that they wanted this expanded use taken very seriously. There were 5 pretty definite supporters there (the council is 9 and one person who will also support was absent). Also, the november election ousted one councillor who was pretty lukewarm and the replacement I think will support this. It will eventually need 6 votes to approve the additional money (the 7 mill is already approved).