I wanted to pass along one item that is worth noting from that agenda.
4. OLD BUSINESS
Direction from Council on completion of the URS Inc contract for the Design Concept Report for Kingman Crossing/I-40 Traffic Interchange and termination of development management agreement with S&Y Capital Group (SYCG)
The contract with URS Inc for the Design Concept Report for the proposed Kingman Crossing/I-40 traffic interchange is approximately 90% complete. $52,254.00 remains to be paid on the original contract price of $321,457.00. The City of Kingman has signed a development management agreement and brokerage agreement with SYCG. This agreement authorized SYCG to spend up to $250,000.00 up front on the planning and preliminary design for the Kingman Crossing project. Staff recommends that the Design Concept Report for this project be completed. The report is 90% complete and would be valid for a period of at least five years.
Staff recommends terminating the development management and brokerage agreements with SYCG, and authorizing up to $250,000.00 in contingency funds to reimburse their planning expenses.
As you can see, tonights Council action will likely put another major tie to the former city manager to bed.
Now I don't know how the the usual suspects will address the Council tonight, and I won't be there to witness it for myself (I'll have to watch the video the next day).
I think I can safely say that all sides will support the termination of the the agreement with the SYCG (Stone & Youngberg Capital Group). This company was essentially hired by the city to manage the potential sale of the 168 acres of prime location property along Interstate 40 near Kingman Crossing. It is my understanding that in return for the sale, SYCG would collect 14% of the amount of sale for conducting the transaction.
Now... bringing this into the realm of real estate sales... 14% commission seems like a lot of fees. Let me admit that I have never been involved in this kind of transaction before... by that I mean be an agent on behalf of a government entity... so I don't know what may be involved. But 14%?? That never rested well with me. To me it sounds as if Kingman hired a 'partner' instead of an agent.
I do not know for certain if the former city manager hired SYCG or not, but their association has been synonymous for the last couple of years. The association attracted even more scrutiny when the infamous city emails started leaking out.
At the recent issues election, the voters turned down giving authority to the City Council to sell the Kingman resident owned property... so the termination of SYCG (since they were hired to manage a potential sale) was likely inevitable at this point.
Leading up to the election I was telling everyone to vote 'YES' to Kingman on all the ballot measures, but I wasn't supporting a sale of the resident owned property in the near term. I still believe that either leasing or selling the property is a wise move... only when the property is fully conditioned for highest and best use that would bring the ultimate value. In order to do that I felt that changing the designation to the property on the general plan to something along the lines of 'Regional Commercial' AND figuring out a sensible way to have infrastructure (say... I don't know... a traffic interchange in the area) provided to the property would lead us all in the right direction.
The eventual outcome of the election though tells us that other solutions will need to be sought and agreed to before the resident owned property can truly be the kind of asset that will benefit the entire community.
I don't even pretend to know the motivation of the SYCG plans. I have no idea if they wanted to help the conditioning effort to eventually sell the property for $50 dollars or $50 million dollars (I assume the value of the property right now is somewhere in that range). I will be comfortable if the Council decides to terminate the agreement tonight with SYCG and continue the URS Inc. design concept for the proposed interchange.
But this is also where I think the comments could get interesting, if there are any. The design concept decision is an opportunity for certain community groups and potential candidates for Mayor and Council to be on record as to whether they support the interchange or not. Might we hear some folks say that the remaining 10% of the design concept be sacked?? If so, why??
Of course you know that I'd support finishing the design. At that point the clock would start ticking and the city could then begin looking for ways to possibly produce what is designed and do so in a way to benefit the entire community. If at some point there appears a means to a positive end... a winning position for the city to take action on... then good. I prefer that the city keeps the options open for now that could lead to something good, Kingman certainly could use some good right about now (instead of waiting a year or until 2013 or whatever).
Should make for an interesting (and probably long) meeting.
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