I was quite alarmed, having watched the Jamestown City Council debates, there wasn’t a single question asked about economic development or tourism in Jamestown.

Not a single question about exactly what is going on downtown. How was this possible? With millions and millions of taxpayer money pumped into a small area of an impoverished town, there was no retrospection on what was working and what did not work.

Who is controlling the economic direction of Downtown Jamestown? The alarming answer is, to a great extent, not the city government. Perhaps that is why the questions never came up. Our elected officials are impotent when it comes to downtown. They can’t even seem to get a Christmas parade together. Our downtown has been bought and taken over by non elected people who run nonprofits, the chief culprit being the Gebbie Foundation.

Is this something we want?

The Gebbie Foundation started in the 1960s with the money two Gebbie sisters left to create a foundation in honor of their parents. It was to act as a charitable foundation. The intention of the sisters was to have their foundation help the poor in Jamestown. Their intention was not to take over downtown. Somewhere along the line, in the early 1990s I believe, the board of the Gebbie Foundation decided they didn’t like the mission the Gebbie sisters had set up. In spite of the expressed wishes of the Gebbie sisters, their mission was changed to focus on spending their money on downtown. At the time losing this funding was a huge blow to several organizations that were helping the poor with the Gebbie grants. I wonder what the Gebbie sisters would say if they were alive today.

It was also a time in the city’s history when the city was more or less broke, as it is today. Gebbie started by building the ice arena. Several people warned them it was the wrong building for downtown. It was too small for large events and too big for small events. Gebbie bought up property downtown, or helped other nonprofits do the same. Gebbie achieved this because they had the money the city did not. We were promised when the ice arena was built it would be a game changer. We were promised when the Reg was renovated it would be a game changer. We were promised when the National Comedy Center was built it would be a game changer.

Gebbie can spend their money how they like, they are a private organization. But the truckload of taxpayer money used to augment their dubious plans is our business. It’s obscene to have spent that amount of taxpayer money downtown when 30% of the city is living under the national poverty level. How much of it was wasted? The brewery downtown received a million dollars. That was a total disaster. It quickly closed. The NCC was given the train station for free without any notice to the public after $13 million dollars in taxpayer money renovated it. CARTS was thrown out of the NCC, and now the taxpayers are on the hook for the new awful hub. The two huge banks downtown are for sale again. The Hilton DoubleTree was given $2.5 million dollars of taxpayer money. Two members of the NCC board received very large contracts from Doubletree. This information is in the public record. One was to put new windows on the hotel and one was to put much of the furniture in the hotel. Should members of the NCC board receive these large contracts? I am not suggesting anything illegal is going on, but it certainly has the appearance of impropriety. At least it does to me. I am well aware there are plenty of people who are willing to look the other way.

It’s not over. Far from it. Gebbie has their sites on the Furniture Mart building, and who knows what else. It’s no secret Carl Paladino was interested in the Furniture Mart Building. Greg Edwards, who heads Gebbie, was Mr. Paladino’s running mate in 2010 in his run for governor. Interesting.

Gebbie is also really good at funding off-shoot non profits. The Jamestown Renaissance Corporation being one of them. They pay the salary of it’s director. Almost every non profit in downtown, of which there are many, have received funds from Gebbie. In my opinion this money has tainted almost every organization who received it. Especially because the flow of the Gebbie money hasn’t stopped. If you are beholden to Gebbie’s purse strings it may make you look at them in a different light.

I am not saying Gebbie hasn’t done some good. It has, but at what cost? Although the people of Jamestown do not own the buildings downtown, it is in a sense our downtown. Gebbie has failed the people of Jamestown by abandoning them and concentrating on tourists. They have also failed on their own terms. Where are the tourists we were promised? It’s time someone says what is obvious. It’s been a failure. It’s been a failure, in my opinion, because Gebbie did not include the people of Jamestown in their plans. It’s been a failure because I feel our elected city officials didn’t have enough inclusion in these plans. It’s been a failure because a large percentage of downtown is now nonprofits who pay little or no taxes. The city cannot sustain itself unless the tax base is broadened. Gebbie is pushing the economic development in Jamestown, when I believe it should be our elected officials doing that. We have put our eggs in one basket — tourism, because we have a nonprofit running the economic agenda.

We have a shadow government in Jamestown, and it’s unhealthy for the town. Until that is resolved, I don’t see things improving.

Tom Andolora is a Jamestown resident.