Correcting the Record (again).... what I really said.

At its June 10^th Monthly Meeting, the Village Board discussed bids for removing the oil tank from the Grove Property.

Contrary to reporting in the PCN&R on June 11^th, I did not “[state] that [the Grove] could be worth $4,500, or more if a bidding war was started”.

I said:   "…We’re going to be spending $1,460 …. I want to make sure this is money we’re going to get back in the sale price of this….we’re doing this in anticipation of selling this property, which is great.  I just think that…. this should definitely be reflected in the sale price that we get….Are we spending other money?  The Highway Department spending time on it – and that’s money.  Are we doing anything else?”

Trustee Bowman pointed out that the Village has been paying insurance on the Grove for as long as it has owned the property. 

I replied:  “Yes we have. That’s true …and maybe  we can get that back in the …purchase price. I think that’s about $4,500….if we’ve been paying insurance between $4,500 and $5,000 over the time we’ve held the building and we want to get that back, that should be reflected in the sale price……when you purchase your house you make an offer and the people selling it make a counter-offer for the price....we‘ve been offered $5,000 and then we were ask to undertake improvements and that starts to chip away at the $5,000….”

I said: “We haven’t had this property appraised…..we should not undertake a sale without doing the kind of due diligence that you do when you sell a house….If we are spending taxpayers money to improve the property and maintain the property we have an obligation to recover as much of that money and more if we can, when we sell.”

I said: “…now that we’re undertaking these improvements …. we essentially have an asset that is a different asset than we had months ago when we didn’t know about the value of the clean site. A clean site and being able to sell a known clean site is much more valuable than the specter of the unknown…”

I said: “…As we proceed with this we need to be sensitive to the value we have right now in our possession.”

I said: “I’m not saying we reject this offer.  I’m saying we intelligently negotiate with this prospective buyer.”

I said:  “We’re agreeing now to spend as much as a much wider distribution of an ad would have cost - on improving the property. We’re spending it here where we didn’t intend to spend this money. The RFP was as-is.  Spending $1,500 on tank abandonment is not as-is and the result of that is a completely different property.”

I said:  “I want us to be thinking about this bid as investment that we are a going to recoup - an expenditure that we’re going to recoup - and that we’re smart about improving this property which we’re putting up for sale."