This is why you never buy a house on land you don't own

wapiticountry wrote:
I would be shocked if the City wasn't required by law to maximize the proceeds in any sale. Usually this is accomplished by requiring sealed bids in any sale of publicly owned property. It is possible that the parks have the right of first refusal in such a sale, but I really can't see any way they could just negotiate a sales price without competitive bidding. A negotiated sale without bidding would be ripe for all sorts of fraud and malfeasance. Selling the land for $30 Million when it is worth $50 million would be ripping off the taxpayers, but might be very attractive to the City staffer whose uncle owned one of the parks or if there was a million dollars of unmarked bills suddenly left on the seat of his car. Obviously we don't have all the information, so it will be very interesting to see how it plays out.

The article talks about this issue by indicating they had independent appraisals done...While it's possible it could be manipulated, it's not likely and it's a defendable option if they followed a reasonable process.

I think the bigger complication was the ancillary benefits to the local economy. The campgrounds represent a high density of short term guests who likely spend a lot on a per person basis at other businesses. So doing a high bid option may have killed the RV parks only to be replaced by lower density, lower per capita spending condos. The rest of the business community would not be happy about that kind of action. This creates a conflict of interest within the city and is a good reason why they aren't well suited to playing landlord.