Quote:
Originally Posted by iggy_oi
When you say the infrastructure runs underneath structures, do you mean the mobile homes? As in you know moveable properties? I may be having one of my logic oversight episodes you were talking about, but I think there is a chance the city would be able to avoid ripping through a trailer's living room.
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A key claim of the tenants has been that their trailers have degraded to the point where they are unmovable. So the trailers would have to be moved in order to repair buried utilities, then they would be demanding money to pay for the damage caused by moving them for the repairs.
Quote:
Originally Posted by iggy_oi
So according to you the actual costs were either $11 or $17 million, the disparity between those estimates makes me question their accuracy, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. In any event the price tag on its own doesn't make or break the case for whether or not it is a viable investment. If we looked at the price tag of any single service the city does in isolation everything looks expensive. Look into how much it costs to repave the street infront of one city bloc, if we just looked at the price in isolation on everything we'd never fix anything. Obviously the land is valuable, but the city selling it doesn't really benefit me so why would I be opposed to the people who it does effect fighting to keep it? Considering how much this repair would cost me individually as a taxpayer I couldn't justify displacing people in order to save money so that someone more fortunate can eventually profit. You don't have to agree, but to be honest I considee my taxes being spent on helping others to be one of their least wasteful uses.
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The tenants wanted to purchase the land for its assessed value of $10 million, the city said that in order for it to be sold, the utilities would need to be fixed and that would cost in the neighborhood of $7 million, so would need $17 million to sell the land. Regardless, the park is not public land, so it is an entirely different situation than the city repairing utilities on public land. If the city fixed the utilities, the tenants would see their rent increase in order to fund those repairs. If the repairs were completed on the taxpayer dime, they would be creating a precedent and then have to fight every single homeowner that has a sewer or water line need to be replaced on their property.