Reason #1 to VOTE NO on April 1 – FOLLOW THE MONEY!

(This is the first in a series of letters around the development of a 140 unit assisted living facility and parking garage).

Money is a powerful agreement between two or more parties. It’s why Article 1 was moderated by town officials at the February 6 Special Town Meeting for over 3 hours. Article 1 does ‘authorize the Board of Selectmen to convey’…  ‘the land’ … ‘for such consideration and upon such terms as the Selectmen shall deem most advantageous for the Town‘.  Here I review the value of the land as presented by Town officials then and its value five months prior according to the Town’s assessors and the proposed beneficiary, Shelter Development, LLC.

Town officials began with a 30 minute, 36 page power point presentation called ‘The Garage Solution’, of which 5 pages were financials, those being my focus here. You may be surprised to hear that I have found nothing in the printed materials that I directly take issue with. In fact, I have defended them quite vigorously with folks who heartily support my conclusions. How can that be? Well, there is a very powerful, effective and delicate distinction common in business practice. It’s why firms have the legal, marketing, and executive branches, layered above the accounting staff.  Required here is a mature and vigorous review of all the materials, before a conclusion can be made. It takes much more time than is available in a three hour meeting to get that view. That is precisely why it is an invaluable business tool. After much review, what I take great issue with is how this was ‘pitched’ to the citizens, or should we say ‘picked’ for the citizens.

Intelligent Voters expressed their outrage that no numerical value above zero was presented at Town Meeting by either a Town Official or a representative of Shelter LLC. Nothing! Several Town officials did provide voters with the following values, and I quote:  ‘worthless’, ‘close to zero’, ‘valuable‘, and ‘super valuable’.  (The complete Town Meeting and PowerPoint are available at: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Stop-Town-Land-Give-Away/371038403038249)

This energized several of us to search for the facts, and four days later, Town Hall staff provided a start; according to the Town’s assessors in 2014, Parcel 17-094-088 is $431,800.

28 days later we obtained and read the RFP (‘Proposed Sale of Town-Owned Land For The Purpose of Constructing and Operating a Parking Garage’, Date of Issue October 2, 2013, Deadline 8:00pm on November 1, 2013), where “It is described on the Assessor’s property record card as consisting of .413 acres and having an assessed value of $420,300 for Fiscal year 2013”. On the same day we read the response to the RFP (Shelter Development, LLC Proposed Sale of Town-Owned Land For The Purpose of Constructing and Operating a Parking Garage November 15, 2013). The town parcel is ‘the 0.4-acre municipal lot (the “Property”)’, and “Shelter would gain an estimated $1.5 million in value from the additional density by acquiring the Property”.

Quite simply, I am outraged that these numbers were not provided to the citizens at Town meeting.  In conclusion, “Reason #1 to VOTE NO on April 1 – FOLLOW THE MONEY” is because 148 people voted to give away a parcel of land valued at ‘worthless’, ‘close to zero’, ‘valuable‘, ‘super valuable’, $420,300, $431,800, and $1.5 million.

Sincerely,

Robert Mitchell