Todays Bulletin holds yet another nugget on how fastidiously the City looks after our tax dollars (if the City Bus fiasco just wasn't enough). Entitled, Bend golf course sees greener days ahead - Mountain High is being restored after several years without water, the story paints a tale of woe... or it it WHOA!
Seems Mountain High developer Jan Ward could no longer water the gold courses on the North side of his China Hat road development when the City condemned his water facilities. Welp, it only took a few years before courses went to pot and homeowners sued to have the course restored. Judge Titkin also has a little surprise for the City:
Tiktin ordered the city to pay Ward nearly $6.7 million last year for the water system, plus interest and attorneys' fees, ruling that it acted in bad faith when it condemned his water system in 2002 and offered too little to compensate him for it. The two sides are still wrestling over the amount of attorneys' fees, but the final bill is expected to total around $12 million, including the city's own legal expenses to fight the case.
So we, the lucky taxpayers, have the privledge of paying a developer almost $19 MILLION plus interest to rebuild a gold course that the developer states was losing "around $150,000 a year".
That's probably well North of $20,000,000 going to build a money losing golf course. It could have gone to building a homeless shelter. Nay, a homeless palace. Maybe gussied up a road or two. Or just about anything. Just about anything would be better than paying the legal fees to compensate some developer to rebuild a white elephant golf course so a few homeowners can bask in it's property raising munificence.
What a load of crap.
Thursday, February 1, 2007
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