ypsi~dixit

What's up with this? I don't remember reading or hearing about the possibility of the City having to pay Biltmore, and I try to pay attention. There needs to be more transparency in our City's government.

The city collects 8 million in property taxes per year, so this represents coming on 10% of that. Also, the Visteon closure is expected to lop off another 10% of total property taxes. One wonders what the disputed amount of money was, when the developer and city were at odds over additional unexpected cleanup. Was this mystery amount really so un-negotiable?

Tonight, I have read over the City web page's " Questions and Answers" about the Water Street project from earlier this year. I went to the presentation on Water Street earlier this year. There was no mention of any future payments to Biltmore. Biltmore was only discussed as a spurned developer, not as an entity that the City would have to pay in order to extract information to entice other developers.

That's the better part of a million bucks down the drain. Off to a great start.

Hey...

We hope the information will help jump-start the next developer upon the signing their contract. Biltmore put in a lot of good background work, and they came to us with a proposal to provide the materials, with a structured payment plan. They get some compensation for work done. We get a project moving along, and nobody goes to court.

Read that last line again.

Brian

Brian: thanks for visiting. But I do wonder how much the disputed clean-up would have cost, and why the disputed clean-up could not have been successfully negotiated in some manner so that the project didn't stall.

My point is that there should be more discussion with citizens as to what the City is planning to do. Transparency. Maybe this explanation from Brian is a step in that direction.