What you see is weasel wording. Dreams to Desolation and Bank fraud, not expected but pled to, was the direct outcome of the Thomaswood folks in their haste to make millions off their cornfield selling to Bruce Nedegaard.
No prior council set that policy, other than to reason: leave it private sector, don't socialize it; don't subsidize it.
Unfortunately, private sector in a boom market, (per the Thomaswood profit-motivated decision making pair), led to the BIG BRUCE NEDEGAARD SPLAT.
Now, Drive north on Sunfish Lake Blvd and a quarter mile or so before the Alpine light, on the east side, notice the Thomaswood driveway sign, accompanied by a bevy of political signs of the Thomaswood favorites.
It is a crony sign pack, and what's his name, Emily's spouse, is right in there among them.
Go figure who is propagating the current thing in a meandering way, having gone as far as spending public money to compete with a private sector landowner who did know what he was doing and who built a VA center that is quite popular while having been fully financed with only private dollars invested, but with the Thomaswood favorites trying to take credit for their competitor's talent, panache and success.
What the Thomaswood favorites cheerfully ignored is that the market crashed for a range of reasons and was thus telling all but the most intrepidly inattentive that real estate was to be distressed for years.
So the Thomaswood favorites reasoned, "It's a big time splat, let's use city public money to buy and socialize it so we can play as if we know what we're doing," but instead they gave Landform $1.25 million, for Landform to pretend they know what they're doing (seemingly little, besides having a hand out and never turning down the current regime of regular monthly five-figure largesse for Landform).
Darren Lazan, he's not on the ballot, but the guy who loves the Flaherty subsidies, he is, and he bashes others (who never routed Darren a penny nor gave Indiana Jones Flaherty a multi-million dollar construction loan because a gamble can be fun when it's public money not yours).
Don't be too afraid to not SEE WHAT'S HAPPENING THERE.
___________UPDATE___________
Big lie two: This pack inherited an AA+ bond rating, with ample levels of reserves. and the rating agencies have not yet lowered it despite dangerous reductions of reserves so as to allow chest-pounding over an unsustainably low levy rate - unsustainable because there are only a finite amount of reserves left to deplete before that well runs dry. Their trick, turning the city into an operation run by Kurt Ulrich, who they'd have fired if they had the council votes, together with a pack of interns and high priced consultants. If the Flaherty gamble works as we all now are forced to hope for, then the bond rating may not bomb out; but if that mega-rental gamble by the rails goes splat the way Nedegaard did, this time it will be public dollars down the drain, and our town's bond rating will adjust accordingly - going down the drain too.
BE AFRAID, WHEN YOU SEE THE GAMBLE THAT'S THERE.