OPINION: EDA Workforce housing: a fairytale?

It just keeps getting curiouser and curiouser!

This latest narrative that we are expected to believe makes one feel that he has followed the white rabbit down the rabbit hole.

Let’s see if I’ve got the story straight.

At the request of the Aikens Group, the EDA has secretly been working with them since November 2014. (Another top-secret project of the EDA.) Apparently, the Aikens Group needed the EDA to secretly pull the permits. (Why a well-established, premier development and management firm of apartment buildings and hotels would need help pulling their permits is unknown. Maybe they are incapable of pulling their own permits.)

According to the EDA, the Aikens Group picked the site. (It’s just pure coincidence that it belongs to Jennifer McDonald’s aunt and uncle, and that they own the real estate firm that Jennifer McDonald is licensed with as a real estate agent.)

The land was donated by the said aunt and uncle, so that they could claim a tax credit. The Deed signed on June 6, 2016 shows that consideration of $445,000 was paid, even though the EDA insisted it was a donation. When questioned at the Council meeting on November 14, 2016 by that uneducated Councilman Bébhinn Egger as to why the Deed showed that $445,000 was paid for the donated property, she is told by Jennifer McDonald that that was merely an appraisal for the property so that Jennifer McDonald’s aunt and uncle could get their tax credit.

On April 28, 2017, the EDA announces that a previously secret construction deadline of March 1, 2017 has passed, and therefore the donated property will now have to be purchased for $445,000 because the poor aunt and uncle, for some unknown reason, will now no longer be able to claim their tax credit. The deadline was apparently so secret, that no Board member of the EDA could truthfully claim that they had ever heard of it. Neither could either the past or current attorney for the EDA.

It is then announced that actually there never was an appraisal for the property, but that the EDA will still purchase the property for $445,000 since they have already spent $500,000 for site preparation. (Maybe no one in the EDA has ever learned the basic business principle that one does not make a future financial decision based on sunk costs.)
When further questioned at the May 8, 2017 Council meeting by that still uneducated Councilman Bébhinn Egger as to why she was told there was an appraisal when there was not, where the $445,000 figure came from, and why Council was not told about the secret deadline when the EDA came before them on November 14, 2016, the EDA releases a 383 page pile of non-answers to her questions. (Maybe the $445,000 figure came from the same place that the $1.2 million Afton Inn value came from.)

In June of 2017 it is further revealed by the EDA’s Jennifer McDonald, that they were only kidding when they said they had sunk $500,000 into the project, it was really only $10,500.

On June 9, 2017, an appraisal is finally done on the property, and of course, it appraises at $450,000. The only comparable used that is in Warren County is the property itself, which the appraiser apparently thinks was sold in June of 2016 for $445,000.

And now we’re told that this project was really an Aikens Group project all the time. How the previously announced donation, the secret construction deadline, and the $445,000 Consideration on the June 2016 Deed fit into this latest story is unknown and perhaps unknowable by us peasants.

And all of this is for a phony “workforce housing” project, since there is no requirement that these apartments be rented to our beloved “workforce”.

Got it?

Now, where did that white rabbit go?

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