The Chronicle recently reported that a breath-taking $47,000 was spent for landscaping the Story mansion, of which $17,000 was paid by the City as part of the buy-sell agreement.
Why would the City agree to pay part of the landscaping in a deal where we are already losing millions? What kind of business acumen does it take to sell a property at a gargantuan loss and commit to an additional $17,000 for flowers? This is your tax dollars they are wasting.
Let me walk you through the tangled web. The city purchased the property for $1.3 million from a fraternity in 2003. In total, roughly $3.3 million in federal, state, and local taxpayer funds were spent. Oh, and let’s not forget the lost property tax revenues from it being off the taxpayer rolls.
You might recall a group called Friends of the Story Mansion had an odd arrangement with the City to come up with $391,222 within 2 years to pay back the City. The City obtained this money from property tax revenues so that it could secure a $500,000 federal grant in a deal known as the "Becker Amendment," named after Commissioner Sean Becker. Well, we know the Friends failed, and per the agreement the mansion was put up for sale.
And sell it did, to a non-profit organization called Exergy Friends of the Story Mansion, or EFSM. EFSM is a non-profit formed by the partnership of Exergy Integrated Systems (EIS) and, surprise, Friends of the Story Mansion. Oh, and former City of Bozeman planning director Andy Epple, director of the Friends, is also the director of EFSM.
According to an April 14, 2011 Chronicle article, EIS sent a letter to the Bozeman City commission on April 1, 2011 suggesting that be allowed to purchase the property for, surprise, $391,222. The writer of the letter was former MSU professor Gordon Brittan, who is now EIS’s director of new product development, and not coincidentally, also the vice president of EFSM.
The article seems to indicate that the letter was sent by EIS and not the non-profit shell called EFSM (I call it a shell because according to www.taxexemptworld.com, EFSM has no assets or income). But a change in strategy must have occurred somewhere along the line, because a later Chronicle article (July 27, 2011) informs us that “under the proposal, Exergy would partner with Friends of the Story Mansion to form a joint nonprofit….”
Note the future tense, “…would partner….” As we know, the City is forbidden from selling the property for less than 90% of its appraised value, unless the sale is to a non-profit. So the yet-to-be-formed non-profit EFSM was apparently conceived expressly to facilitate the below-market purchase of the Story Mansion, in a deal with many of the same players that were part of the failed “Friends” deal.
One might conclude that Friends of Story Mansion had found their bankroll in EIS and established EFSM to funnel the purchase price through a non-profit. As a result, the Friends can continue to control the object of its affection without having to come up with a dime of its own money.
I’d be the first to assume the best, but given the track history of the City and the previous failure of the Friends, a bit of skepticism is justified. This is the same City that messed up the transfer station, demanded Facebook passwords of its employees, paid fines to former employees, created a lightly used bus system and parking garage, and charged Wal-Mart $500,000 in extortion money
Story Mansion is a loser, made worse by a buy-sell agreement in which the taxpayers lose even more. Even worse, these same commissioners are piling on, now claiming to know that the new McDonald’s building design “…effectively turns the entire building into a sign and creates an unfair advantage for the business…” Um, yeah. They know all about unequal business deals, don’t they?
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