Burlingate Numbers Game Gets Worse

July 15th, 2008 at 08:21pm Michael Conniff 2

Now I'm really mad.

First the Aspen City Council, knowingly or not, published a brochure wih gargantuan errors that helped convince unsuspecting voters to vote for the Burlingate affordable housing project.

Then Mayor Mick Ireland and Aspen City Council--for reasons no Kremlinologist could ever fathom--fought tooth and nail to squelch any investigation, most recently the suggestion of an independent prosecutor.

Now it gets personal. In a newspaper advertising campaign paid for with taxpayer dollars, the City is misquoting something I said so as to present further misinformation about Burlingate, so as to pass the infamous $75 million bond in November. Without the bond to paper over their mistakes, Burlingate Phases II and III could fade into memory. No wonder they continue to mislead the public.

In a blog called "Aspen's Half-A-Billion Housing Scam," written before the Burlingate blow-up, I said the total cost of affordable housing--as forecast by the city itself--would exceed $500 million. I'll explain how I got to that number in a moment. But the key thing here is I said all of affordable housing would exceed half-a-billion.

I never ever said Burlingate would exceed $500 million. I said affordable housing in toto would exceed $500 million. That's all the difference in the world.

Given the constant mistakes the City makes with regard to published numbers in the Burlingate brochure, you would think the City would be meticulously sure all numbers are accurate forevermore.

Not so--and what makes me really mad is City Manager Steve Barwick knows it. On my "Con Games" radio show Barwick challenged me on exactly this in a break.

"You have some things to answer for, too," he said to me.

"What's that?" I said.

"The number you've been throwing around," he said. "A half-a-billion dollars."

 I explained to the Aspen City Manager that my number came from HIS number--the $200 million the city said it would spend on affordable housing--by 2012, within five years! The $200 million comes from the City's own 2007 long-range planning information. You could look it up and so could he.

I told Barwick if the $200 million were financed by a bond, it would come close to $500 million--$440 million at 4 percent over the 30-year life of a bond, as it turns out--and that's not counting all of those nifty cost overruns the City Council is now infamous for.

In the KNFO studio, Barwick never said a word about it. He asked and I answered and that was it. Somehow the number has re-emerged as the first "question" in the City's misinformation campaign.

I'm further outraged by the City's attempts to sell the Burlingame bond issue using taxpayer money--using taxpayer money to convince taxpayers to spend more taxpayer money.

Gee...that sounds just like Burlingate all over again.

Entry Filed under: Aspen, Affordable Housing, Aspen City Council