Bob G.'s Question & Answer Session
Before we open the WC forum discussion on this topic though, we can't resist commenting upon a paragraph in Bob G's discussion that we find to be more than slightly unnerving from a taxpayer's point of view:
It is my understanding that the land must be sold for fair market value. The city cannot give it away. Further, from a financial standpoint, we must take into consideration the value of the overall package to the city. Maybe someone out there would be willing to pay more for the land than Chris Peterson and then continue to run it as it is currently being run---$320,000 loss to the new owner rather than the to Ogden, City. However, his one-time purchase will provide Ogden city with a single influx of money. Chris Peterson's plans will generate a significant tax benefit to the city while still offering the city fair market value for the course. The current discounted value of Chris Peterson's future payment streams to the city in the form of taxes, plus the fair market value that he will pay to the city, plus the other economic investments that will come in response to Chris's investment are what we need to consider here. I'd be interested to meet the buyer who will pay the current discounted value of Chris Peterson's perpetual $5,000,000 tax stream to the city, plus the fair market price that he is going to pay for the land, plus a very modest estimate of future investments that would accommodate Chris's investment and then sit on the land as it is currently being used, losing $320,000 per year.While Bob gets off to a fairly good start by remarking that the 140-acre park property "must be sold for fair market value," he then rambles, spirals and descends into a hopefully fuzzy analysis, disjointedly mixing in concepts of business valuation, tax increment streams and "other economic investments," etc., and does this vaguely enough to entirely negate his encouraging opening sentence and render the rest of his answer useless.
With all due respect to the enthusiastic Mr. Geiger, it seems to Weber County Forum that determining fair market value of the Mt. Ogden parcel "ain't all that complicated." All that's necessary is to find the price per acre for comparable sales of undeveloped east bench property, and apply it to the Mt. Ogden property. That's how realtors do it. That's how real developers do it. That's how the taxpayers should do it, assuming for sake of argument that the property will be sold at all.
The term "fair market value" is a term of art, by the way, susceptible to uncomplicated definition.
In that connection, several readers in an earlier comments thread calculated the value of the assumed 140 acres at $45 million, based on comparable sales prices of Davis County bench property. And a recent Std-Ex reader letter pegged the value at $100 million*, based on the price per acre value of the 20 acre Golf City property, which sold within the last week or so for $6 million. If the Mt. Ogden property is to be sold at all, it seems to us clear that it should be sold only at fair market value, i.e., a price comparable to those of other similar properties in the area. I suspect that price will be far more than Chris Peterson is willing to cough up, and that this is the reason Mr. Geiger waffles on the subject of fair market price.
Professor Dorsey raises some interesting additional questions re the "valuation" of public parklands too. What would be the fair market value of Yellowstone Park, for instance... or Yosemite or Canyonlands? Mt. Ogden is regarded by many as a unique local park treasure, after all. Can it honestly be regarded as just another run-of the-mill Ogden City real estate asset? SO many questions; so few answers.
Other than that, we'll leave the analysis up to our gentle readers. It's YOUR forum after all.
(*We calculate a $42 million value [based on the Golf City sale] -- Perhaps the reader was also taking the 150+ acre WSU property into account in his $100 million calculation)
Update 4/17/8:20 p.m. MT: The gondolists have dragged out their "big gun" lawyer "mouthpiece" to duel with the college perfessors. Somebody musta struck a nerve, I guess. Gawd do We ever love Ogden city politics.
Ramming the gondola project down the citizens' throats is obviously a "mission from God" for the entire Allen family.
This is definitely "getting good."
We will resereve our own comments for later.
What about it gentle readers? What other comments and observations are you willing to "ordain" on this subject?
