As Election Day creeps closer and closer Park City residents are running out of time to decide where they stand on the Treasure Hill Bond issue. A meeting was held Wednesday night giving those opposed to the bond a chance to be heard.
Mark Stemler, a resident of Park City and property owner in town held a meeting on Main Street on Wednesday evening to encourage people to vote against the Treasure Hill Bond appearing on Parkites ballots this election season.
“My goal in creating this no vote site and putting this venue together tonight was to create a common platform." Stemler said, "To share ideas as to why voting no is the correct thing to do with Treasure. I differ in many ways from other ‘no’ voters. I do believe the project could be built, I do believe its grossly out of scale, it can go forward I believe that 100 percent. The thing that’s interesting is if 'no' carries as a silent majority you guys are going to come running at the ideas that I have. Because I think that what council has done is set us up in a bad way, by giving us two choices. You vote yes, option ‘A’ way over here is option ‘Z’. You get a 10% reduction, in essence instead of a 14-story building you get a 12-story building. We get all the traffic, all the stuff that would ruin this town. I’ve talked to a number of people that have ‘Yes’ signs in their yard that are planning on voting no because they have so much peer pressure.”
The meeting was held in a building Stemler owns on Main Street. Stemler spoke for about a half hour, afterwards those in attendance participated in a lively discussion for about an hour. About 20 people were present at the meeting, nearly half for the bond and half against. One of those against the bond was David Nadler, a realtor in the Park City area. He said he knows of an appraisal on the land done in 2010; was much lower than the $64 million that the city will spend on the property.
“I happen to be for buying that property, I think it’s a great thing." Nadler continued, "What I’m opposed to is buying it for $60 million when I know for a fact its worth 50% less. It’s worth $30 million. The original appraisal, the woman when she received it, was more pissed off than you can imagine because it was about $10 million. The original appraisal is much less. The current appraisal per opinions from four different appraisers, many real estate people, would be $25-$30 million. Hearsay correct? We don’t really know. So why don’t we do an appraisal? Let’s do an appraisal, it’s $60 million, maybe it’s $30 million. I think everyone who’s voting yes would say ‘well wait a minute if its $30 million, I wouldn’t have voted yes’. So why not divulge the actual information and we’ll figure it out?”
Nadler also said he simply wanted more transparency about the value of the property.
Some at the meeting in favor of the bond argued that according to several closely involved parties the project was valued at over $90 million. They also argued that having the value of the property in the open could hurt the leverage the city has.
Stemler ultimately argued that the city council had unfairly packed the options for citizens.
“We paid $4.4 million in 1990 for the McPolin barn, it was a great buy." Stemler continued, "Round Valley was, I supported the buy at Bonanza. One of the reasons is I didn’t want another two Montages up there creating all that much more traffic. I’m for open space. Like I said, if you give up three lousy acres of 123 and you have 120 left to work with doesn’t that make more sense? But no, we’ve got to go completely green. And I find it, that’s coming from our council, almost a jihadist kind of conditioning out of these guys. They drive their agendas so hard they throw us over the damn bus with these two options here. So, I’m telling my friends, vote ‘No’. Vote ‘No’ and make this thing reset itself. You say, ‘well what happens if we won’t use emanate domain?’ I say well it sure would be nice if you would, why wouldn’t you use that tool?”
Those in favor of the bond at the meeting said that no lands attorneys have said that emanate domain is a viable option in this case.
