Just when we all thought Johnson's Pasture was saved, city negotiations with the pasture owners hit a snag, as the Bulletin pointed out earlier this month.
The pasture has been held up in probate court in San Diego County for years, with no real buyers, other than the city of Claremont, whose voters last November approved the issuance of up to $12.5 million in bonds to buy the land.
The city had purchased an option to buy the land but allowed the option to lapse in December 2006 while they continued to negotiate a sale price on the 180 acres of hillside open space.
The original price the city had negotiated with the sellers was $12 million, but that price was based on a flawed appraisal. Claremont also has a $1 million state of California grant that they can use to buy the land, but the state audited the original appraisal and disagreed with it. The state required a second appraisal be done in order for the city to qualify for the state grant money, and the second appraisal came in at $11.5 million. So Claremont officials have been trying to get the sellers to come down $500,000 in order to get the state money.
Really, the city is looking at a $1.5 million turnaround if the sellers agree to the lower price--a half-million for the lower sale price, and the million dollars from the state. This reduces the debt the taxpayers have to take on. The city is also compelled to argue for the lower price because there are other open space parcels adjacent to Johnson's Pasture that the city might like to acquire in the future. The city would need additional state grants to do that, but Claremont might jeopardize qualifying for any future grants if they show a history of paying above market value for the land.
The families that are selling Johnson's Pasture are running their own campaign--to make more profit. They've been posturing and politicking, claiming in Bulletin that the state grant would prevent the city from using the threat of eminent domain to buy the land. The owners want that eminent domain threat because they can get additional tax breaks with that threat--even if the City really didn't intend to exercise eminent domain.
The pasture owners seem to really be posturing here. Their spokesman Mike Vasilove sounded like a used car salesman in the Bulletin article:
- Vasilove said the owners would still prefer for the city to buy the land, but noted that they have other options.
"There is no lack of interested buyers to develop this property," he said. "The owners have never really needed the city to step up and purchase this property."
Yes, if you don't buy now, this baby'll be gone by the afternoon. We had another couple in this morning ready to buy.
Vasilove is pretty transparent. If the sellers had other options, they wouldn't bother carrying out their negotiations publicly in the Bulletin and in an open letter to the Claremont Courier on 3/1/2007. If there were really other buyers, the owners would just say, Thank you Claremont, Goodbye, and sell to whatever developer they had lined up. Moreover, if they sold to a private party, there would be no eminent domain threat for them to use with the IRS.
In their Courier letter last Wednesday, the pasture owners sound like they're trying to squeeze the extra $500,000 from the city:
- City officials are premature and incorrect regarding their statement about the pasture being saved. It isn’t yet and we believe strongly the voters will again speak loud and clear on March 6th if the city fails to acquire “The Jewel of the Foothills” this time. That’s our opinion.
—The Owners of Johnson’s Pasture
Why don't they just send Rocco out to break a few knuckles? It amounts to much the same thing. The owners are just trying to throw a scare into Johnson Pasture supporters hoping they will frighten the city into action. Nothing like sowing a little panic to get some action.
Funny how these things come up right before the election--mining, affordable housing, Padua Park, Johnson's Pasture, Police Commission Chair Kevin Arnold's recent tantrum (noooooo, that didn't have anything to do with electioneering). What was everyone doing the last two years?
Postscript: The city has its response to the pasture owners' mini-PR campaign: http://www.ci.claremont.ca.us/download.cfm?ID=1077.
Give the city's staff credit, they are working pretty hard on a lot of these issues. They're using a lot more imagination in coming up with solutions than the prior administration did, and they get precious little credit for it. They've taken the professionalism up a notch in town. They just need to realize that Ellen Taylor, Sandy Baldonado, Paul Held, Valerie Martinez, et. al., do not represent the entire city. If fact, they represent an increasingly smaller demographic.
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