From: Caleb Tennis
Columbus
Do you think while buying 400,000 square feet of vast empty mall space, with no plan yet on what to do with it, the city should buy another 11,000 building for "storage" use?
Amidst its end-of-year spending spree on the FairOaks Mall and the ASAP Hub, it was almost overlooked that the parks department injected a request for additional funding to buy a $300,000 building near the park operations center for storage purposes.
At the October parks board meeting, the parks department made the request of the board to buy the building. At that time, the required appraisals had not yet come in, nor had the environmental study. Even though parks board members had reservations about the haste of the request, it was stated that time was of the essence to get the purchase done before the end of the year to accommodate the seller.
Parks board members were never made aware the seller happened to be the mayor’s aunt, and the mayor happened to be the registered agent of the company owning the building. When questioned at their next meeting they admitted nobody from the city told them.
The mayor’s name was even still listed as the owning company’s registered agent until a day before the second council meeting, after which it had been transferred to one of the contracted city attorneys.
The city’s purchase arrangement is also unconventional: $50,000 per year over the next six years. I don’t know any previous transactions in which the city spreads out the payments of its own real property acquisition, especially at the request of the seller. There’s plenty of money available in the reserve funds to buy the entire building outright. Is it normal for the city to accommodate this kind of request? Does this mean the seller has a mortgage interest in the property until the city is done paying it off?
This scenario sounds like they received advice from their registered agent accountant on how to best structure the situation financially and avoid a large tax hit.
City council members didn’t seem to be too concerned, as few questions were asked at both meetings. I’ve witnessed council members spend more time debating minutiae of signage ordinances than they spent on even a hint of questioning around the millions of dollars in real estate that’s been acquired in the past few months.
Eerily silent was the parks business services director, who ironically wrote a 2015 “In For Jim” letter to the editor criticizing the former administration’s use of additional appropriations for buying items outside of the normal city budget.
Are you the least bit shocked that one of the paid appraisers of the property was also a previous “In For Jim” letter writer?
Would you be surprised to know that the property seller was a Lienhoop mayoral campaign contributor?
Shame on everyone involved in this, but especially the city council, which is supposed to be the check and balance to protect us from this both wasteful and corrupt spending.
