I need to start this column with some personal disclosures: I have never shot fish in a barrel. I deny ever having stolen candy from a baby. (Actually, it depends on how you define "stolen.") And I have never rolled off a log, at least not as an adult. So, I don't really know how easy all these things are. But then again, none of them could be easier than finding the flaws in the City of Murrieta's plan to provide about $115 million in bond financing for the RogersDale theme park to be built in the Riverside County city. Promotional materials for RogersDale, which is inspired by the later cowboy star Roy Rogers and his wife Dale Evans, describe the park as "celebrating and reliving the American West of yesteryear" through the means of "entertainment, retail and educational venues, restaurants, specialty shops, cinemas, museums, authentic architecture, a Western Sidekick Walk of Fame and a non-denominational chapel." An 8,000-seat auditorium is the centerpiece of RogersDale. Heading the project team is retail developer Zev Buffman and Roy "Dusty" Rogers Jr., the son of Roy Rogers and operator of the family museum in Victorville. In June, the Murrieta City Council unanimously approved the issuance of about $115 million in Marks-Roos bonds for the project. (Local newspapers reported the amount at $104 million, but City Finance Director Teri Ferro said the amount would be higher.) The bond proceeds will help pay for most of the $170 million RogersDale U.S.A. Western-themed entertainment-and-retail extravaganza. The bond issuer is a joint-powers authority comprised of the City of Murrieta and the city's own redevelopment agency. (Never mind that these two different agencies are virtually the same: As in many California cities, the city council does double-duty as the redevelopment board.) Under the terms of the bond deal, the city would be obliged to start repaying the 30-year bonds in the third year. Assuming an interest rate of about 6 percent on $115 million, annual interest payments come to $6.9 million. According to one analysis, the project needs to attract 1.1 million visitors and generate $49 million annually to make its debt service and contribute an additional $6 million of anticipated sales tax revenues to the city. To accomplish this task, RogersDale promoters must sell at least 4,000 seats to more than 630 events a year. No, you're not getting a cold. Everybody feels a chill when they hear those numbers — everybody except the Murrieta city council, underwriters Solomon Smith Barney and Miller & Schroeder, and bond counsel Fulbright & Jaworski and Harper & Burns. By the way, John Harper, a name partner in Harper & Burns, is also the contract city attorney of Murrieta. Readers will recall that in 1996, William E. Gnass, then contract city attorney for the City of Waterford, was arrested by state authorities for allegedly failing to disclose that he was both disclosure counsel and bond counsel for the same city. In contrast, Mr. Harper's role is totally legal. Unlike Gnass, Harper has disclosed the fact that he is both the city attorney and the city's bond counsel. To Murrieta's credit, at least 2,500 people in town objected to this deal, or at least wanted to put the bond measure on the ballot. Although the opponents of RogersDale had gathered the legal number of signatures for a referendum, the City Council ignored them. In a maneuver that belongs in every future textbook on California government, the Murrieta City Council outfoxed referendum supporters by repealing the language of the financing plan that was the target of the referendum. With the offending language gone, the referendum had nothing to reject. Later the same night, the council, wearing the hats of the redevelopment agency board, adopted a new measure containing a strikingly similar financing plan. I suspect that the City Council will someday regret not being able to blame the decision to finance RogersDale on somebody else. The first flaw is the use of Marks-Roos bonds — yet again — to finance a questionable and highly speculative real estate project. These bonds, and the poorly conceived projects that they have funded, have led to near-insolvency for the cities of Wasco and Lake Elsinore. An even deeper flaw is the city's belief that a single project, such as a flashy theme park, can be the magic bullet to achieve economic-development goals. A healthy local economy is based on many companies in different lines of business, not on a single monolith that must sell 4,000 concert tickets 600 times a year to make money. A second flaw is whether or not Buffman and Rogers have the resources to market RogersDale successfully. Even non-experts like myself are aware that theme parks like Disneyland, Six Flags Magic Mountain, Knott's Berry Farm and Universal Studios spend tens of millions of dollars apiece to promote their attractions. These same theme parks also must spend heavily to create new rides and new attractions every year to keep the crowds coming back. I have not yet seen evidence that Buffman, a self- described Broadway producer and football team co-founder, has either the management expertise or financial depth to keep a very complex and very capital-intensive business afloat. If Buffman is rich, then why doesn't he get a conventional construction loan or line of credit? Why is he relying on a house of cards like a Marks-Roos bond issue? I'm not saying that RogersDale will be a certain failure. Heaven could take pity on Murrieta, and send an experienced theme-park operator to the city. Otherwise, it looks like almost certain disaster. Even in the colorful annals of Marks Roos, this is a notably unwise project. Indeed, this is the worst deal entered into by a California city since Oakland agreed to a $150 million subsidy to lure back the Raiders football franchise. It's easy to find fault with the public financing for RogersDale. The hard part will be for Murrieta to get out of the way once the monster starts to fall.