My Vista neighbors, I urge you to vote yes on Proposition C on Tuesday. I am the guy who was behind the "L NO!" campaign last fall. You spoke and passed the measure. I can live with this and will continue to work to see that our tax money is spent prudently and wisely. I also believe that we should be able to complete the projects and attendant bonding in 20 years, not the 30 years Proposition L proponents are planning.

Passing Prop. C and being a charter city will give us taxpayers the best opportunity to have the many Prop. L projects completed at the most competitive prices. One major factor is to be free of the now-mandated prevailing wage requirements. Prevailing wage laws are an insidious holdover from long ago, and the state mechanisms for setting these non-market wages have been long ago rigged by the unions. The results can be a real rip-off to those of us paying taxes.

Let's compare some specific projects. From this week's San Diego Business Journal listing of "Largest Construction Projects":

The city of San Diego's City Heights Senior Housing Project will complete this September 151 units with a total of 95,000 square feet for $21,974,825. In February, with private funding, 148 condos totaling 188,000 square feet known as "Lofts at 677" on G Street were completed at a cost of $19,502,993. Compare $231 per square foot with prevailing wages versus $104 per square foot at market wages! Also, the completed market units are nearly twice as large as the government-funded units. What makes this comparison so interesting is that the same general contractor, Harper Construction, built both projects.

Both Qualcomm and Cardinal Health built or are building headquarters/class A office buildings. Qualcomm's project came in at $289 per square foot and Cardinal Health's is budgeted at $244 per square foot. This is where the market is for buildings of this type. UC San Diego has two similar projects: the Music Building at $537 per square foot and the Rady School of Management at $436 per square foot. The University of California, as a state agency, is compelled to pay prevailing wages, and these costs reflect that.

Vista has an opportunity, should the charter measure Prop. C pass, to use city-generated tax monies in the market without prevailing wage requirements. Savings could be as significant as those illustrated above.

Closer to home, right in Vista, dj Ortho recently completed its new headquarters building. If the data I have are correct, this 111,600-square-foot facility came in at $185 per square foot. Vista's most current estimate of the construction cost of the new Civic Center/City Hall is $328 per square feet for a comparable size (100,000 square feet) and comparable use project.

If only $50 per square foot could be saved on the new City Hall, we would save $5 million in direct cost and more than $10 million in bonded debt. This alone is reason enough to make Vista a charter city.

Let's give our city the ability to use the marketplace to determine how much to pay for the capital projects that we ask the next generation to pay for. Let's get Prop. L done prudently and expeditiously, then bond for 20 years, not 30 years. I urge you to vote yes on Prop. C.

Vista resident Chuck Rabel is former chairman of the Vista Chamber of Commerce and vice president of DDH Enterprise, a cable manufacturer based in Vista.