From The Total BS Department
"Attorney Duran clarified that while the settlement with the BIA had been reached in closed session, the City Council did not consider specific adjustments to the DIF in closed session because the Brown Act forbids that. Adjustments can only be made after an open, public hearing (like this city council meeting)."
Skyborne and Straight out of ditz Ville She Votes On $9 Million Item Without A Clue What Its About Three times during the council discussions about the Skyborne bonds Mayor Parks said she thought the bonds "did not follow the property" and that they just somehow disappeared if the property changed ownership. On that basis she thought they were not secure instruments and voted against keeping them in place at Skyborne.
The bonds are tied to the project - that is why they are in place even now and after Skyborne Ventures purchased Skyborne from D.R. Horton. The bonds stay with the project!!! D.R. Horton has not been able to shed the bonds just because they sold the property. The pressure to release the bonds has come from Skyborne Ventures (and developer campaign contributions). SV has a hard time in the current bond market getting new bonds to replace the bonds D.R. Horton carries. D.R. Horton, having sold the property, wants to get the bonds off its books.
“I think there is a miscommunication as to how far a bond goes,” said Mayor Yvonne Parks. She's got that right. It goes a heck of a lot farther than a lien.
The Bottom Line On Skyborne
Picture graciously provided by Ronslog
We have another project that is not finished and the city has no means to makes sure it gets finished. Heck, what's one more unfinished development we can't do anything about? This town gets the messes it deserves while the developers get the favors they pay for.
Country Bumpkins But wait....The city will, in addition to the lien contract, get bonds to assure that dust and erosion due to water will not be a problem. The amount of those bonds had not been determined... Now the rest of the story! The developer offered a bond of, get this, $25,000. No, we did not leave off a zero. That's Twenty Five Thousand Dollars. That $25,000 is to cover the area shaded in yellow
To its credit, the city staff did not accept that number. But it is instructive on just how much Skyborne Ventures thinks of our council that they would offer a number so obscenely low. A $25,000 bond to cover the hundreds of acres in the shaded area for dust and erosion control would be like spittin' in the wind. It's an insult to the council. It's scary to us just how low the bar has been moved on what a developer thinks he has to jump over to get his way with this council.
UPDATE: Story picked up by local news UPDATE: Still Not A Word About Skyborne Deal There is plenty of news in the Desert Sun but not one word reporting a $9+ million favor to a developer voted on by the city council Tuesday night.
An agenda item that involved over $9 million and took up over 50 minutes of Tuesday night's city council meeting did not receive one word of print in the Desert Sun or other local blogs. We don't expect them to call it the biggest developer give-away since Meyer-Luce ran the place as we do. But in journalism the questions usually answered are who, what, when, where and why.
Safeco
$1,017,109 - Rating:
A What's next, someone bringing up Bernie Madoff as reason to swap bonds for liens? What
Do All Those $$$ Amounts Represent What else could happen...the project sits stalled and unfinished until another buyer is found. Gee, we don't have any of those type of projects anywhere. If you have not figured this one out by now, this developer favor if it goes through will be the grand daddy of all developer favors. It will make the favors to Meyer-Luce look like peanuts. And in the latest laughable quote, we just read someone suggest "It will make a great regional park." Reminiscent of Palmwood
In a display reminiscent of the way the Palmwood housing development deal was handled, the city council was asked to make a $10 million decision on the Skyborne deal with city staff handing documents to the council members just minutes before the start of the council meeting. One of those documents was an appraisal (supplied by the developer) that showed the property to be worth $20 million. The appraisal was supplied as support for the city council to accept a lien on the property in exchange for releasing $10 million in bonds. The bonds are offered as guarantee the project will be completed. It was not quite as bad as the Palmwood housing development deal, however. During Palmwood, supporting documents critical to the deliberations were still being handed to the city council members an hour after discussion of Palmwood had already started. Flashback: Palmwood AIG was used to prop up the argument that the bonds are risky and that the city should release the bonds and instead accept a lien from the developer. AIG has a A++ rating. It also represents only a little over $100,000 of the bonds in place, making them relatively inconsequential in the mix. We have seen BS before. This one stinks. |
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