Standard-Examiner: $17M Powder Mountain Project Could Hit Taxpayers (For $Millions)

Our apologies to our Gentle Readers for "slipping up" on this

Kudos to the Standard-Examiner for putting the spotlight on this distressing news, which comes on the heels of the Weber County Commission's approval on Tuesday (8/20/13) of a $17 million bond that will enable Summit Mountain Holding Group to use loaned money for its planned road, water and sewer improvements to the Powder Mountain Ski Resort.  Although we'd been following this story here on Weber County Forum, we confess this "surprise" element does "throw us for a loop":

OGDEN — Weber County and the Summit Group have made a great show of solidarity about the Powder Mountain project, but all of the positive implications of a new-and-improved ski resort may be hiding the heavy financial implications of the county borrowing $17 million and giving Summit 20 years to pay it back.
According to Dan Olsen, comptroller of Weber County, Summit is supposed to pay back the bond over a 20-year period, but terms of the deal do not obligate Summit to even begin paying back any of that money until two years from now.
“We borrowed enough money so that Weber County can make the bond payments for the first two years. Summit is actually on the hook for 18 years of the 20, which is how it works with a capitalized interest investment,” Olsen said. [Emphasis added].

Read this morning's full Mikayla Beyer story here:

• $17M Powder Mountain project could hit taxpayers

That's right, folks. The very day we were obsessing over Ogden City water and sewer bonding, our Weber County Commission "quietly" slipped this shameless and grotesque exhibition of corporate welfare right past us. According to this morning''s story, "...the county, not Summit, will be making payments of just over $1.5 million for the next few years."

Weber County Comptroller Dan Wilson blithely assures Weber County taxpayers "[that's] how it works with a capitalized interest investment,” a statement which is flat-out untrue. In truth, every dime of bond payment obligation could have been, and ought to have been passed straight through to the ultimate beneficiaries of Weber County corporate largesse, the Summit Group. Gotta hand it to these "sharp" Summit Group "operators," however, for quietly engineering this unbelievable "sweetheart deal."

Our apologies to our Gentle Readers for slipping up on this. Henceforth we pledge to follow our heretofore financially-prudent Weber County Commission with a greatly renewed vigor.

Nobody's perfect, we guess.  Not even us.