A photo of Ben Dover, the Ramsey taxpayer, perpetual tin smile across the street from the overbuilt $19.2 million City Hall (behind Ben in the color photo - behind the ramp in the b/w photo). That City Hall is a legend and legacy from the James Norman tenure - and from the councilmembers who voted with him - including all four up for reelection 2008, Jeffrey, Olson, Strommen and the mayor. Councilmembers who did not feel people should have a referendum over palace-building before all of it got done to them.
So, who is paying - Who else ever ends up paying when Ramsey spends, besides Smiling Ben?
Strib, Oct. 11, online headline, "Ramsey Town Center auction postponed one more time." (PiPress, its coverage, Oct. 12.
Is that news to anyone? What else is there to expect? Postponed to Halloween. What then? Same old, same old, it seems. Yet, what's interesting is this excerpt, at the end of this current Oct. 11, 2007, article:
WHO IS PAYING?
The city recently won a lawsuit over a $3 million letter of credit from a bank that had guaranteed it for Nedegaard and will be able to use the money to continue building roads and other infrastructure, Trudgeon said.
But the anticipated tax base from Ramsey Town Center hasn't shown up, and now the city is trying to figure out how to pay for the $19.2 million new municipal center that was supposed to be paid for with taxes from new businesses.
Yeah, Ben, nice smile. Build more infrastructure with recoup dollars, let taxpayers eat all of the palatial City Hall cost. Makes a lot of sense, with it being a distressed project, etc.
Sink in more subsidy money. Don't help the taxpayers.
When Minnwest Bank keeps its laughable postponement game rolling, we can see it is a numbers game.
Now, the other quote of the day, Sarah McCann writing for Strib in the not too distant past, on March 16, 2005, story headlined, "Ramsey Thinks Big," this excerpt:
Who is paying for all this?
Ramsey Town Center LLC purchased the farmland for $31.5 million. The city is contributing $32 million in support for infrastructure, roads and regional improvements and public facilities.
Most of the Town Center is not eligible for tax-increment financing, in which taxes generated by a project pay off bonds. However, the $3.5 million in taxes that the project will generate each year will go to the city's general fund. The general fund will then help pay for the Town Center. Because the development will bring in such a large chunk of money each year, residents won't notice an increase in taxes, according to the city.
The appraised market value of the complete Town Center is projected at $1.1 billion. The county will help with $4.2 million for roads. In addition, there is money from the state, grants, assessments and other tax-increment financing districts in the city.
Since 2002 the Met Council has awarded the Town Center project three Livable Community Demonstration grants that total $3,373,756.
When is it going to be finished?
[...]
Sure, "according to the city." Pigs will fly too.
Met council tokens in three million and some change, and how much are Ben and the others hung out to dry on? The palace, the infrastructure, stuff in the ground at Town Center put there at taxpayer expense, chasing dreams and needing debt amortization day after day after day, while it all sits. $32 million, the article says. To pay for itself "according to the city." Yes, the beat goes on. And on, and on, and on. Yogi Berra's "Deja vu, all over again," from article to article, 2-1/2 years apart. And those Met Council dollars. They're not from Santa Claus. Met Council does not mint money. It taxes. So it is direct Ramsey tax money paid at the insinuation of a fraction of indirect Ramsey tax money. Tax cash chasing tax cash, with Ben left in the cold of winter, the heat of summer, to smile.
The Oct. 11 Strib article quotes Patrick Trudgeon, with whom I agree 100%:
"The city's view is we're not going to seriously talk about changes until they own the land," Trudgeon said.
Let that risk-taking entrepreneurial person step forward, willing to put HIS money at risk and not try to fleece taxpayers, and then, if he will pay down the assessments against the property so taxpayers get some kind of a quid-pro-quo break, he might be justified in seeking an altered set of plans and proposals.
NOTE: If he will pay down the assessments ... That is or should be an absolute precondition.
Ben the taxpayer has taken enough abuse on the palace thing. Give Ben a break, then ask for alterations. Nedegaard struck out. Batter up. The bank's done nothing deserving concessions, so let it deal with the result of its faulty loan policies and policing. Why in the world should taxpayers bail out the bank? By making concessions to them now, by making concessions to MinnWest ever?
Swap some concessions later, perhaps, for benefit to the taxpayers. Trudgeon is right about that. Give a little, take a little. After the bank's out of the loop.
And in closing and about not fleecing taxpayers:
Wouldn't it have been nice of Mr. Erhart to have sponsored something more favorable to Anoka County taxpayers than buying distressed land right next to the railroad tracks for the morgue at over half-a-million-dollars per acre?
That's a big time hit to the taxpayers. Is the county's morgue taxable property? Will it add one penny to the Ramsey tax base? Morgue jobs are largely in place and people will commute to Ramsey. No great foreseeable number of new jobs created here, via the morgue.
And putting it into the County minutes as a per square foot price, looks disingenuous. It makes it a bit harder for reading taxpayers to reckon it out at a per acre price. It looks as if that was the only intended reason for using per-square-foot language about buying 1.2 acres of raw land - obfuscation for no purpose beyond obfuscation - and why?
Per square foot pricing is the norm when talking about building space, not raw land.
If all the vacant Town Center acreage were all really worth that much, and the bank is foreclosing 150 acres of it on a $35 million debt, why would there have been any postponements?
There should be buyers tripping all over each other to buy at $35 million, if you can chop it up and sell it off for $500,000++ per acre.
Would a private party have paid over half-a-million-dollars per acre? Is the stuff there now with the "For Sale" signs going to draw that kind of cash per acre?
I guess the best answer might be the old folks home right next door to the morgue -- did they pay anything near to that per-acre amount when it was not tax dollars being squandered in a windfall to the parcel owner? I do not know. Is there anyone who will step forward from the Crest View venture and say? Or will the seller to Crest View discuss it publicly? Compare and contrast per acre price, adjacent parcels, sold about the same time? More questions than answers is what makes Ben smile.