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

IBJ Editorial - City Should Release Details About Broad Ripple Parking Garage

Thanks to a tip from Zach Adamson, Candidate for City-County Council, I was alerted that the IBJ has an editorial in today's edition.; "City should share more details on garage deal".  The editorial is locked on their website, but the essence is this:

Parking is a problem in Broad Ripple and the City's investment in and finding a developer for a garage there is appropriate.  But, the financials of the deal should be revealed by the City.

This follows last week's IBJ article by Cory Schouten, who, like I, was denied access to the construction costs and operating expense analysis submitted with the winning bid by the Keystone Group. 

Good.  We all need to continually push for the public's right to know.  Sometimes things are hidden by officials because revealing them would bring embarrassment or worse to an office holder.  Other times things are hidden simply for convenience.  Sadly for our democracy, when officials withhold information, they forget that they are elected to serve the public.  For the public to ask for proof that they are doing that job well, is appropriate.