2018

If it Smells Bad and Looks Bad, it is probably Bad.

l3wis March 14, 2018 2Comments

This is exactly what I told the city council last week in reference to doing business with Legacy Development for the Downtown Parking Ramp PPP.

Today it was announced that the piling on continues;

A lawsuit was filed on behalf of Emily, Mike and Chris Fodness on Tuesday.  The defendants named in the court filing include Legacy Development & Consulting Company, LLC; Aaron Hultgren; Hultgren Construction, LLC.; Boomerang Investments, LLC; CLP Investments, LLC; Olympia Real Estate Holdings, LLC; and RISE Structural Associates, Inc.

Besides the McMahon and Fodness families suing, the Federal Government and OSHA are still investigating, those charges could be coming very soon.

Many in the public continue to ask the question; Why would a majority of the council support this project? What do they know? Many feel there is some kind of underlying corruption going on. Makes you wonder, and if there is what could it be?

Let’s look at what we know for sure;

We know that for some strange reason the city agreed to pay for ALL of the foundation costs which basically doubled the price of the parking ramp.

We also know that the hotel got one heck of a deal on the lease without a proper appraisal.

So what would happen if the bonds (around $21 million) are taken out in April and the deal with Legacy or Lamont falls through before a shovel goes in the ground? This means the city would have this money sitting in an account to use for almost anything. Why? Because the bonds will be taken out with the 2nd Penny as collateral. Like the $9.1 million mortgage payment on the Denty per year and the $1.1 million mortgage we pay on the administration building we would have to pay an additional $1 million out of this fund, which is supposed to be for road repair.

When this deal was struck many directors and councilors claimed that we would never have to worry about that because the parking department’s enterprise fund produces enough revenue to make the mortgage payment. No way. The revenue basically covers wages and maintenance now, and not much left over for bond payments. Those fees will have to be raised significantly to cover that payment. Let’s face it, it was no accident that the 2nd penny was used as collateral, because it will have to make this payment. No getting around it.

So is this just a scam to get our hands on $21 million for something else? Not sure. But the whole deal stinks really, really bad. I guess we will have to wait, once again, on the courts to open the books.