More News About Broad Ripple Parking Garage Deal - Sheesh !

In what ranks as a truly convoluted and weird twist in the ongoing saga of the bad Broad Ripple Parking Garage deal, WRTV reporter, Kara Kenney scores this tidbit from Council President, Ryan Vaughn:

If the garage is profitable - the City can buy it for $1.  If the garage is unprofitable - the developer can make the City buy it for $1.

Wowsa !

Fellow blogger and lawyer, Paul Ogden, does an excellent job of analysing the legal illogic embodied in this strategy in his entry yesterday "Council President Ryan Vaughn Claims Broad Ripple Parking Garage Will Have Two-Way, Buy-Sell Option; Vaughn's Claim Strains Any Credibility".  I highly recommend you read it.

I have to look at it this way -  if the garage is profitable, why would the City essentially take it from the developer?  Don't we want private enterprise?  I know that's why I question a lot of deals that the City makes, because the taxpayers are bankrolling what should be private enterprise on the private dime.  I can't imagine any Mayor taking the heat for taking a profitable business from any business person for $1 for any reason - contract or no contract.

If the garage is unprofitable, why should the City's taxpayers be on the hook for it?  Why is the theme of the Ballard administration that business should not carry any risk?  In one deal after another, Ballard forks over large sums of taxpayer cash to a developer and crafts a deal to remove any future risk to the develop, and transfers that risk back to the taxpayers.  Remember No-So; the poster child of no risk to the developer?

I would sum this deal and others up with :

heads - the developer wins -- tails - the City loses