Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Shade of business going on here.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I'm seeing its shadows everywhere.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Business going on here, seeing shadows everywhere.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
I mean, what you supposed to do when you feel
about a safe business.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Coming back with yours truly, the Jimmy Junior Blues Band,
you a little shade of business going on in original
to hum by yours truly as we wrap up and
wind down the show, filling in for Mandy Connell Jimmy Sangenberger,
glad to be with you.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
And look, when it comes to shady business, there's a
heck of a lot going on in government right now,
all across the board, top to bottom. And that includes locally,
which is part of the reason why you may see
it talking about Denver Public Schools, are talking about the
(01:29):
city of Lakewood, as we will now in columns I
write for the Denver Gazette, where I.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Will say there's shady.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Business going on in this situation or whatnot or reference
shady business. Yeah, I have my song in mind, but
it's because there is shady business happening. And you can
follow along with a lot of this from my coverage
in the Denver Gazette.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
And what is this I'm talking about?
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Well, a few years ago, Jefferson County Schools closed a
number of district schools. One of them is Emery Elementary
in Lakewood, which just before they closed the school, the
district spent two point six million dollars to upgrade the
school building, then they closed it. Then the question is
(02:16):
what do you do with the school with the property
in the land surrounding it.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
The answer should be.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Open up to private bidding, Allow municipalities to have their
say and to pitch their offers, Allow a private developers
to do that. Allow charter schools the opportunity to say, hey,
we'd like to bid on this property because it's already's
owned for a school. Well, Jefferson County school said, that's not.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
What we're going to do.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Instead, we're going to create this new process called municipal interest,
and we're going to say there's.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
No private bidding.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
The only one that gets to say if they want
this property and to present a bid and to negotiate
is the City of Lakewood. And this was a process
that began in January of last year.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Most people were.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Unaware of what was happening and the prospect of a
deal until April of this year, when the city council
voted to authorize the four million dollar purchase of Emory
Elementary and the surrounding land by the city manager Kathy Hodgson.
(03:29):
Go ahead and take the opportunity and negotiate this. And
it gets even more interesting from there, especially when last
fall of last year, in September, the city council went
into two illegal executive sessions that were not properly noticed,
which is where my in studio guest comes into play.
(03:52):
Anita Springsteen is an attorney and former city councilwoman in
Lakewood who sued the City of Lakewood over these illegal
executive sessions, saying, you didn't give proper notice, you didn't
specify what these negotiations which is what they put in
the notice are about, and in state law open meetings laws,
(04:15):
you're supposed to give particular details. Then a trial was
set in February of this year for October twenty eighth. Well,
the city council had some other votes they had to do,
including selling Emory Elementary before they even completed the purchase
of Emory Elementary. Imagine that you go and you say,
(04:37):
you know what, We're gonna sell this property before we
complete the purchase of the property, like are you going
to do that?
Speaker 1 (04:44):
How were you?
Speaker 3 (04:45):
How can you even make that determination? Well, needless to say,
a judge in Lakewood put the cabash temporarily and delayed
the process with an injunction saying we're not going to
allow these votes to proceed. And eventually a determination was
made from the judge earlier this week saying actually it's okay,
(05:08):
we're going to allow these sales to move or these
proceedings to move forward.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
From the city council.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
They had other votes to sell the school before they
even bought it, and to buy the property for a
nonprofit I haven't mentioned yet, the Action Center that provides
different community services, and they're going to buy the property
of Emory Elementary for one million dollars. Now, the property
of Emory's worth up to twelve million dollars, Lakewood's buying
(05:38):
it for four Emory is being sold to the Action
Center the building.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
For one million dollars. Meanwhile, the city is going to
move ahead and.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Buy the Action centers to current buildings for up to
four million dollars and lease it to them temporarily while
the elementary school is purchased. In all of that completes.
It is complicated, it is convoluted. It took a long
setup before I could welcome my guest, Anita Springsteen. Anita,
(06:10):
welcome to the show. Good to have you in studio.
Thank you for having me, Thanks for joining us. So
I tried laying out as much as I could in
a few minutes time.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
What did I miss?
Speaker 3 (06:22):
What other aspects to this or do you think you're
worth mentioning? And then we'll get to some of what
you've done with filing lawsuits and so forth.
Speaker 4 (06:30):
So I think a couple of things worth mentioning is
that the judge did find that the city aired in
the public notice to go into executive session. So the
city is required to properly notice a session like that
because it's behind closed doors and not in the public purview.
(06:53):
The judge found that they aired, but she went on
to say that it was just a clerical error and
harmless and therefore not even a slap on the rest
for the city. And what I was attempting to do
was to hold the city accountable because during my time
(07:13):
on council, I saw that time after time after time,
things were kept from the public and there were decisions
made behind closed doors all the time, and so I
thought this was clear enough that there would be no
problem to push that through as an error. Well, I
(07:35):
mean that was essentially creating a new law, and I'm
going to appeal it because it's a strict standard. There
is nothing in the law that says, you know that
the judge can decide why the error was made and
make decisions either the error was made or not. And
(07:57):
the other thing I'd like to point out is the
judge mentioned on that day that she lives. She's a
neighbor of Pambryer, who is the CEO of the Action Center,
and they're in the same book club together. And the
judge didn't mention this until after the trial was over.
(08:19):
And that's a very concerning aspect of to me.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Let me just clarify here.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
So last Tuesday you had the trial, yes, and then
I think it was also to note Thursday, among the
different statements that Lakewood had filed included one from Pambryer,
the CEO of the Action Center. And then Monday morning
of this week you get together for this additional hearing
on the injunction whether or not the votes could proceed
(08:46):
on the different aspects that I mentioned and at the
beginning of that proceeding, but after the trial is when
the judge just closed this personal relationship with the president
CEO of the Action Center nonprofit that stands to buy
Emery Elementary worth up to I would say, eleven million
dollars when we subtract out the land for one million dollars.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
That is correct.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Wow, Wow, I am pretty stunned by that. By the way,
the judge is Megan a milewd or allowed. So that's
a surprising aspect to this. Let's talk about the executive
session piece for a moment you had and I interviewed
him for my columnism in the Denver Gazette for another
(09:35):
former Lakewood City councilman, Richard Over as one of the
folks that testified in your case, and he had an
affidavit he submitted which he also told me about this
that when these executive sessions happened in September of last year,
he himself voted no because he has a member of
(09:55):
the council, did not know what they were going to
be discussing behind closed doors exactly.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
He expressed in testimony that he had a lot of
concerns because constituents were calling him saying what is this
meeting about? And he couldn't tell them, so he voted
no to go into executive session. There was a lot
(10:21):
of discussion about was policy made during this executive session,
were positions taken? And he testified that yes, in fact,
that happened. That is not supposed to happen in an
executive session, so he was already expressing problems with it.
(10:43):
I would like to note that the public notice excluded
the section of the statute that references that they're going
to be discussing sale of real estate, and I believe
that that was intentional and brit And the reason I
say that is when the Council convenes for the public
(11:07):
meeting prior to going into the executive session, where they
make a vote about going in and emotion is set forth,
they do mention the section of the statute that has
to do with the sale of real property. But the
public isn't really going to see that. What they're going
to see is the public notice that was noticed twenty
(11:30):
four hours in advance on the agenda. And so it's
my contention that they knew they should mention that extra
piece of information, and they deliberately didn't because they didn't
want to tip off the public that they were talking
about anything to do with real estate.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Now the city council would say in response, well, okay,
that may have happened.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
They may accept clerical error.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
I don't know they've accepted any wrongdoing in the case
of that, but they would say and have said, We've
had a ton of public meetings. We had, of course,
the meetings on all of these ordinances where the public
could come and make comment.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
We've had other.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
Community meetings with the Action Centers that's the nonprofit that
will buy the building Emory Elementary, and other public meetings.
It has not been in closed doors at the very
least since September of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
What do you say in response.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
To that, Well, I'd like to I mean, first of all,
I know, as a city councilor the propaganda that they
set forth about these public meetings, the truth is the
public has very very little say in anything that happens
and any ordinances that are past. And for instance, doctor Byrne,
(12:50):
who owns a veterinary clinic, tried to go in for
the public meeting October thirteenth. She had to wait like
five hours for a three minute comment. So when you
say that's a robust public process, that's a lie.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
It's a myth.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Not only that, I would say, as I mentioned in
the beginning, it took me five minutes just to detail
some of the basics. This is a very complicated real
estate arrangement that involves the school district selling a property
to the city, and then the city reselling the property
to a nonprofit while simultaneously buying property current property owned
(13:33):
by the nonprofit, and then separately leasing that property to
the nonprofit. I feel like I'm just speaking mumbo jumbo.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
In listening that out.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
So how is the average person supposed to really understand that,
especially when we're also talking a real estate deal in
the millions of dollars exactly.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
And not only that, but.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
There was testimony from the Director of Planning on Monday
when I asked, how was it decided it would be
a four million dollar deal that went into the ordnance
in April? I said, how did the council know ahead
of time what the appraised value of the property was?
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Did you give them an appraisal? He said no?
Speaker 4 (14:22):
And then later, you know, did they even know what
the value was?
Speaker 1 (14:28):
But you know to me.
Speaker 4 (14:30):
Kind of the point is the school district has their
handout begging for money. They want a mill levy, they
want to They keep saying they're in a budget crisis.
We had a situation here at Evergreen High School where
the district apparently didn't have enough money to hire a
full time SRO to protect our children. And yet they
(14:56):
seem to be saying that they have the ability to
give away valuable property.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
They're in a sixty six million dollar deficit, I think,
and that is astonishing, and they have all this property
to sell, and they literally, the school district literally said
we're not accepting private.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Bids for Emery.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
We're doing a municipal interest process and only allowing Lakewood
to be a part of this. And then funny money
plan funny money with the whole thing valued it up
to twelve million dollars, potentially selling it to the city
for four million dollars.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
But here's the thing. The Mayor and.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
City Council put out a statement a few days ago
and they said this, the financial terms of this project
are both fair and forward looking and represent investments in
the community for significant public benefits.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
The city negotiated.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
A four million dollar purchase price for the seventeen acre
Emery property, three million dollars for seven point two acres
of open space the city will retain, and one million
dollars for the former site, which will be resold to
the Action Center for the same one million dollars. I
am stunned because the assessment from the county assessor puts
(16:14):
the building at the bulk of this about eleven million
dollars in value and the land for less than a
million dollars. And not only that, but the school district
that put two point six million dollars into upgrades for
the building.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
And somehow the city.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Is claiming that three million dollars is for the land
and the other million dollars is for the building, which
is really just a nice way for them to say, oh, no,
we're only selling the Action Center the amount that we
think the ten acre building is worth.
Speaker 4 (16:47):
Well, And that's part of the question. Why was there
only one NGO considered here? Why was it only the
Action Center, Why are they the preferred favoritely they're getting
it for free because the city's buying their other property.
And you know, everybody wants to talk about, well, they
(17:10):
want to deflect from the issue and say, well, this
is wonderful. It's for the public good, it's for the community.
And here's what I ask, since when did the school
district's mission change from serving the education of our children
to charity? And when did the city's mission change from
(17:35):
serving the needs of the citizens of Lakewood to basically
representing a non governmental organization.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Now, next week, Jefferson County School's the school board, I
think it's next week, will be taking up a vote
on selling emery. You have filed a notice of claim
in regards to that, to say, okay, maybe try and
stop that.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
What what can you.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Tell us about that aspect of this, especially given the
fiduciary responsibility the district has the taxpayers.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
Well, on September twelfth, I served them with that notice
of claim, which was just to put them on notice
that there could be further illegal proceedings if they just
blow up their fiduciary duty by making this sale.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Not only is there.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
A problem with the numbers and that they're giving away
significant millions of dollars that belong to the school district,
but I also feel that they are circumventing state law,
which requires if they're going to give a building to
an NGL that they need to make findings the building
(18:47):
is no longer needed.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
So it feels.
Speaker 4 (18:50):
Unethical to me that they would go through this municipal
process when everybody knows that it's just to give the
building away.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
To somebody else.
Speaker 4 (19:01):
But yeah, I stated in that, I sort of stated
all of the statutes that I think they're violating, which
include fiduciary duty. I feel like there could be money
laundering going on.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
I feel like this could be a reco case.
Speaker 4 (19:19):
And I'd like to see an investigation by the Attorney General,
by the Department of Justice, by you know, the yeah
whatever at the state.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
And I got one more question for you because we're
out of time, But I do want to say it
was striking to me that the city is now claiming
that the appraisal that they got for the existing property
that the Action Center owns that the city is going
to buy that was appraised at four million dollars, when
the assessed value for the two buildings combined that I
saw from the assessor is two point one million dollars,
(19:53):
about half of that. They're playing funny money all around
and fudging numbers and whatnot, and it is funny. I mean,
I was even told by the spokesperson for the city, Oh,
we're going to be doing three million dollars in grants.
Then I followed up, actually, we're not so sure that
federal grants are going to be applied to the purchase.
What is going on here is crazy. But I want
to ask final question. We are at a time the
(20:16):
judge allowed, judgment allowed, allowed the city to continue to
move forward with all their votes and everything. Are you
are you pleased with what you did? Do you think that,
even though that's the outcome, what you wanted happen.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Because I wasn't thinking that the.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Judge was going to completely put the kebash on this thing,
but you moved ahead.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
You actually got an injunction. Talked to me real quick.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
So what I've said is even if I lose, I've
won because I brought public attention to all of this shady, corrupt,
funny money stuff going on.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
And people need to be.
Speaker 4 (20:54):
Asking questions for them to say that property is a
sas step four million dollars is just a lie, and
people need to understand it's not about the public good
they're trying to do.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
It's that they are playing.
Speaker 4 (21:11):
Games with our taxpayer dollars, and we need to be
asking questions about why that is.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
Well, said Anita Springsteen, our guest here in studio. Thanks
so much for your time and for fighting a good
fight on this one.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Thank you for having me and I will
Speaker 3 (21:25):
Be writing about this again in the Denver Gazette next week,
so watch for that
Shade of business going on here.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I'm seeing its shadows everywhere.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Business going on here, seeing shadows everywhere.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
I mean, what you supposed to do when you feel
about a safe business.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Coming back with yours truly, the Jimmy Junior Blues Band,
you a little shade of business going on in original
to hum by yours truly as we wrap up and
wind down the show, filling in for Mandy Connell Jimmy Sangenberger,
glad to be with you.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
And look, when it comes to shady business, there's a
heck of a lot going on in government right now,
all across the board, top to bottom. And that includes locally,
which is part of the reason why you may see
it talking about Denver Public Schools, are talking about the
(01:29):
city of Lakewood, as we will now in columns I
write for the Denver Gazette, where I.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Will say there's shady.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Business going on in this situation or whatnot or reference
shady business. Yeah, I have my song in mind, but
it's because there is shady business happening. And you can
follow along with a lot of this from my coverage
in the Denver Gazette.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
And what is this I'm talking about?
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Well, a few years ago, Jefferson County Schools closed a
number of district schools. One of them is Emery Elementary
in Lakewood, which just before they closed the school, the
district spent two point six million dollars to upgrade the
school building, then they closed it. Then the question is
(02:16):
what do you do with the school with the property
in the land surrounding it.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
The answer should be.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Open up to private bidding, Allow municipalities to have their
say and to pitch their offers, Allow a private developers
to do that. Allow charter schools the opportunity to say, hey,
we'd like to bid on this property because it's already's
owned for a school. Well, Jefferson County school said, that's not.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
What we're going to do.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Instead, we're going to create this new process called municipal interest,
and we're going to say there's.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
No private bidding.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
The only one that gets to say if they want
this property and to present a bid and to negotiate
is the City of Lakewood. And this was a process
that began in January of last year.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Most people were.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Unaware of what was happening and the prospect of a
deal until April of this year, when the city council
voted to authorize the four million dollar purchase of Emory
Elementary and the surrounding land by the city manager Kathy Hodgson.
(03:29):
Go ahead and take the opportunity and negotiate this. And
it gets even more interesting from there, especially when last
fall of last year, in September, the city council went
into two illegal executive sessions that were not properly noticed,
which is where my in studio guest comes into play.
(03:52):
Anita Springsteen is an attorney and former city councilwoman in
Lakewood who sued the City of Lakewood over these illegal
executive sessions, saying, you didn't give proper notice, you didn't
specify what these negotiations which is what they put in
the notice are about, and in state law open meetings laws,
(04:15):
you're supposed to give particular details. Then a trial was
set in February of this year for October twenty eighth. Well,
the city council had some other votes they had to do,
including selling Emory Elementary before they even completed the purchase
of Emory Elementary. Imagine that you go and you say,
(04:37):
you know what, We're gonna sell this property before we
complete the purchase of the property, like are you going
to do that?
Speaker 1 (04:44):
How were you?
Speaker 3 (04:45):
How can you even make that determination? Well, needless to say,
a judge in Lakewood put the cabash temporarily and delayed
the process with an injunction saying we're not going to
allow these votes to proceed. And eventually a determination was
made from the judge earlier this week saying actually it's okay,
(05:08):
we're going to allow these sales to move or these
proceedings to move forward.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
From the city council.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
They had other votes to sell the school before they
even bought it, and to buy the property for a
nonprofit I haven't mentioned yet, the Action Center that provides
different community services, and they're going to buy the property
of Emory Elementary for one million dollars. Now, the property
of Emory's worth up to twelve million dollars, Lakewood's buying
(05:38):
it for four Emory is being sold to the Action
Center the building.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
For one million dollars. Meanwhile, the city is going to
move ahead and.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Buy the Action centers to current buildings for up to
four million dollars and lease it to them temporarily while
the elementary school is purchased. In all of that completes.
It is complicated, it is convoluted. It took a long
setup before I could welcome my guest, Anita Springsteen. Anita,
(06:10):
welcome to the show. Good to have you in studio.
Thank you for having me, Thanks for joining us. So
I tried laying out as much as I could in
a few minutes time.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
What did I miss?
Speaker 3 (06:22):
What other aspects to this or do you think you're
worth mentioning? And then we'll get to some of what
you've done with filing lawsuits and so forth.
Speaker 4 (06:30):
So I think a couple of things worth mentioning is
that the judge did find that the city aired in
the public notice to go into executive session. So the
city is required to properly notice a session like that
because it's behind closed doors and not in the public purview.
(06:53):
The judge found that they aired, but she went on
to say that it was just a clerical error and
harmless and therefore not even a slap on the rest
for the city. And what I was attempting to do
was to hold the city accountable because during my time
(07:13):
on council, I saw that time after time after time,
things were kept from the public and there were decisions
made behind closed doors all the time, and so I
thought this was clear enough that there would be no
problem to push that through as an error. Well, I
(07:35):
mean that was essentially creating a new law, and I'm
going to appeal it because it's a strict standard. There
is nothing in the law that says, you know that
the judge can decide why the error was made and
make decisions either the error was made or not. And
(07:57):
the other thing I'd like to point out is the
judge mentioned on that day that she lives. She's a
neighbor of Pambryer, who is the CEO of the Action Center,
and they're in the same book club together. And the
judge didn't mention this until after the trial was over.
(08:19):
And that's a very concerning aspect of to me.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Let me just clarify here.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
So last Tuesday you had the trial, yes, and then
I think it was also to note Thursday, among the
different statements that Lakewood had filed included one from Pambryer,
the CEO of the Action Center. And then Monday morning
of this week you get together for this additional hearing
on the injunction whether or not the votes could proceed
(08:46):
on the different aspects that I mentioned and at the
beginning of that proceeding, but after the trial is when
the judge just closed this personal relationship with the president
CEO of the Action Center nonprofit that stands to buy
Emery Elementary worth up to I would say, eleven million
dollars when we subtract out the land for one million dollars.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
That is correct.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Wow, Wow, I am pretty stunned by that. By the way,
the judge is Megan a milewd or allowed. So that's
a surprising aspect to this. Let's talk about the executive
session piece for a moment you had and I interviewed
him for my columnism in the Denver Gazette for another
(09:35):
former Lakewood City councilman, Richard Over as one of the
folks that testified in your case, and he had an
affidavit he submitted which he also told me about this
that when these executive sessions happened in September of last year,
he himself voted no because he has a member of
(09:55):
the council, did not know what they were going to
be discussing behind closed doors exactly.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
He expressed in testimony that he had a lot of
concerns because constituents were calling him saying what is this
meeting about? And he couldn't tell them, so he voted
no to go into executive session. There was a lot
(10:21):
of discussion about was policy made during this executive session,
were positions taken? And he testified that yes, in fact,
that happened. That is not supposed to happen in an
executive session, so he was already expressing problems with it.
(10:43):
I would like to note that the public notice excluded
the section of the statute that references that they're going
to be discussing sale of real estate, and I believe
that that was intentional and brit And the reason I
say that is when the Council convenes for the public
(11:07):
meeting prior to going into the executive session, where they
make a vote about going in and emotion is set forth,
they do mention the section of the statute that has
to do with the sale of real property. But the
public isn't really going to see that. What they're going
to see is the public notice that was noticed twenty
(11:30):
four hours in advance on the agenda. And so it's
my contention that they knew they should mention that extra
piece of information, and they deliberately didn't because they didn't
want to tip off the public that they were talking
about anything to do with real estate.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Now the city council would say in response, well, okay,
that may have happened.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
They may accept clerical error.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
I don't know they've accepted any wrongdoing in the case
of that, but they would say and have said, We've
had a ton of public meetings. We had, of course,
the meetings on all of these ordinances where the public
could come and make comment.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
We've had other.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
Community meetings with the Action Centers that's the nonprofit that
will buy the building Emory Elementary, and other public meetings.
It has not been in closed doors at the very
least since September of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
What do you say in response.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
To that, Well, I'd like to I mean, first of all,
I know, as a city councilor the propaganda that they
set forth about these public meetings, the truth is the
public has very very little say in anything that happens
and any ordinances that are past. And for instance, doctor Byrne,
(12:50):
who owns a veterinary clinic, tried to go in for
the public meeting October thirteenth. She had to wait like
five hours for a three minute comment. So when you
say that's a robust public process, that's a lie.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
It's a myth.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Not only that, I would say, as I mentioned in
the beginning, it took me five minutes just to detail
some of the basics. This is a very complicated real
estate arrangement that involves the school district selling a property
to the city, and then the city reselling the property
to a nonprofit while simultaneously buying property current property owned
(13:33):
by the nonprofit, and then separately leasing that property to
the nonprofit. I feel like I'm just speaking mumbo jumbo.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
In listening that out.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
So how is the average person supposed to really understand that,
especially when we're also talking a real estate deal in
the millions of dollars exactly.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
And not only that, but.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
There was testimony from the Director of Planning on Monday
when I asked, how was it decided it would be
a four million dollar deal that went into the ordnance
in April? I said, how did the council know ahead
of time what the appraised value of the property was?
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Did you give them an appraisal? He said no?
Speaker 4 (14:22):
And then later, you know, did they even know what
the value was?
Speaker 1 (14:28):
But you know to me.
Speaker 4 (14:30):
Kind of the point is the school district has their
handout begging for money. They want a mill levy, they
want to They keep saying they're in a budget crisis.
We had a situation here at Evergreen High School where
the district apparently didn't have enough money to hire a
full time SRO to protect our children. And yet they
(14:56):
seem to be saying that they have the ability to
give away valuable property.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
They're in a sixty six million dollar deficit, I think,
and that is astonishing, and they have all this property
to sell, and they literally, the school district literally said
we're not accepting private.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Bids for Emery.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
We're doing a municipal interest process and only allowing Lakewood
to be a part of this. And then funny money
plan funny money with the whole thing valued it up
to twelve million dollars, potentially selling it to the city
for four million dollars.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
But here's the thing. The Mayor and.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
City Council put out a statement a few days ago
and they said this, the financial terms of this project
are both fair and forward looking and represent investments in
the community for significant public benefits.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
The city negotiated.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
A four million dollar purchase price for the seventeen acre
Emery property, three million dollars for seven point two acres
of open space the city will retain, and one million
dollars for the former site, which will be resold to
the Action Center for the same one million dollars. I
am stunned because the assessment from the county assessor puts
(16:14):
the building at the bulk of this about eleven million
dollars in value and the land for less than a
million dollars. And not only that, but the school district
that put two point six million dollars into upgrades for
the building.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
And somehow the city.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Is claiming that three million dollars is for the land
and the other million dollars is for the building, which
is really just a nice way for them to say, oh, no,
we're only selling the Action Center the amount that we
think the ten acre building is worth.
Speaker 4 (16:47):
Well, And that's part of the question. Why was there
only one NGO considered here? Why was it only the
Action Center, Why are they the preferred favoritely they're getting
it for free because the city's buying their other property.
And you know, everybody wants to talk about, well, they
(17:10):
want to deflect from the issue and say, well, this
is wonderful. It's for the public good, it's for the community.
And here's what I ask, since when did the school
district's mission change from serving the education of our children
to charity? And when did the city's mission change from
(17:35):
serving the needs of the citizens of Lakewood to basically
representing a non governmental organization.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Now, next week, Jefferson County School's the school board, I
think it's next week, will be taking up a vote
on selling emery. You have filed a notice of claim
in regards to that, to say, okay, maybe try and
stop that.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
What what can you.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Tell us about that aspect of this, especially given the
fiduciary responsibility the district has the taxpayers.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
Well, on September twelfth, I served them with that notice
of claim, which was just to put them on notice
that there could be further illegal proceedings if they just
blow up their fiduciary duty by making this sale.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Not only is there.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
A problem with the numbers and that they're giving away
significant millions of dollars that belong to the school district,
but I also feel that they are circumventing state law,
which requires if they're going to give a building to
an NGL that they need to make findings the building
(18:47):
is no longer needed.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
So it feels.
Speaker 4 (18:50):
Unethical to me that they would go through this municipal
process when everybody knows that it's just to give the
building away.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
To somebody else.
Speaker 4 (19:01):
But yeah, I stated in that, I sort of stated
all of the statutes that I think they're violating, which
include fiduciary duty. I feel like there could be money
laundering going on.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
I feel like this could be a reco case.
Speaker 4 (19:19):
And I'd like to see an investigation by the Attorney General,
by the Department of Justice, by you know, the yeah
whatever at the state.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
And I got one more question for you because we're
out of time, But I do want to say it
was striking to me that the city is now claiming
that the appraisal that they got for the existing property
that the Action Center owns that the city is going
to buy that was appraised at four million dollars, when
the assessed value for the two buildings combined that I
saw from the assessor is two point one million dollars,
(19:53):
about half of that. They're playing funny money all around
and fudging numbers and whatnot, and it is funny. I mean,
I was even told by the spokesperson for the city, Oh,
we're going to be doing three million dollars in grants.
Then I followed up, actually, we're not so sure that
federal grants are going to be applied to the purchase.
What is going on here is crazy. But I want
to ask final question. We are at a time the
(20:16):
judge allowed, judgment allowed, allowed the city to continue to
move forward with all their votes and everything. Are you
are you pleased with what you did? Do you think that,
even though that's the outcome, what you wanted happen.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Because I wasn't thinking that the.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Judge was going to completely put the kebash on this thing,
but you moved ahead.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
You actually got an injunction. Talked to me real quick.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
So what I've said is even if I lose, I've
won because I brought public attention to all of this shady, corrupt,
funny money stuff going on.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
And people need to be.
Speaker 4 (20:54):
Asking questions for them to say that property is a
sas step four million dollars is just a lie, and
people need to understand it's not about the public good
they're trying to do.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
It's that they are playing.
Speaker 4 (21:11):
Games with our taxpayer dollars, and we need to be
asking questions about why that is.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
Well, said Anita Springsteen, our guest here in studio. Thanks
so much for your time and for fighting a good
fight on this one.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Thank you for having me and I will
Speaker 3 (21:25):
Be writing about this again in the Denver Gazette next week,
so watch for that
The Mandy Connell Podcast News
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com