Board of Aldermen 12-28-2021 Page 22
If we pass this tonight, yeah it doesn't have a price tag on it and | understood what my colleague Alderman Dowd said. |
think he didn't really mean a blank check but we could still be liable for $2.5 million plus. Even if we bought that property
and we decided to keep the building, it's going to cost to tear it down isn't it? Is there going to be parking? Do we need
fire access because the public is there now? It was private land. There's a lot of ifs. This needs to be very much
explored. I'll keep an open mind on it. It is a wonderful idea but it's between, again, the need and the want. You may
want it but is it the need because | guarantee if it gets shot down today and we keep the discussion and the dialog opened
in the future, the sun will come out tomorrow. It might be a cloudy day, but the sun will come up. So therefore in thinking
that and as | wipe my bloody nose because we're moving at warp speed on this and | really don't understand that. | think
we ought to take a deep breath, stand back, and really look at this whole particular issue, and discuss it further. As it sits
right now, it's moving too fast. It's hard for me to digest it and I'm not going to support it. Thank you, Madam President.
President Wilshire
Thank you.
Alderman Clemons
Thank you, Madam President. So | agree with a lot of what the previous speaker Alderman O'Brien said. Not all of it
because | do think that this is a property that we should buy for $2.5 million but with that said, what if we can get it for
less? What if we can get the property and it doesn't cost the city any money because we can recuperate the cost
because there's currently a house sitting on the property. Maybe we put one or two houses on there that can justify, you
know, the cost of the expensive it, we can subdivide it a little bit, and keep the back, and save most of it, and then the city
ends up it doesn't cost the city anything. We don't know what the possibility is but this allows the discussion to move
further in a more committed way. It doesn't find the Board of Aldermen to buying the property. It doesn't say that, you
know, the next Board has to do this but what it does say is let's explore what our options are because if this is a want and
not a need but there's a way that we can get this property for little to no cost, then is it worth doing? It seemed to me that
the previous speaker seems that that would be the case. | mean | certainly would believe that if we can find a way to
better our city by doing things like this, then we should we should explore those options. They may not come to fruition. It
could be that, you know, if we pass this tonight, that it goes down and negotiations go nowhere, and it ends up being that
the property gets sold. | guess that's a worst case scenario but at least we would have tried to find out some answers,
and to get some answers to the residents who care about this, and to those who have justifiably brought up the price tag.
Let's see what we can do.
So | just think that the best path forward for us to get answers is to pass this and let the Mayor and the Economic
Development Director do some research and see and come back to us with some options and let the next Board of
Aldermen decide what's best. The thing is, is that | understand that as was alluded to by some previous speakers that this
sort of thing can happen anyway and the administration can then bring legislation. The reason though that it didn't
happen that way is because this was an aldermanic agenda item So it came from an Alderman. So for the idea to be
spurred by an Alderman, sometimes it has to come in through the legislative route. It doesn't mean that it's less of an
idea, or that it shouldn't be studied more, or that no thought went into it on the other hand either. It's just the way that
came in.
| do think that there is merit to the legislation. | think that there's a lot of questions that can be answered by moving
forward with it. So | would encourage my colleagues to support this in the sense of let's see what we can get and then
later on, we can decide whether or not we have the money, or the finances, or what the final deal is. But let's at least
move this forward and explore those options.
Alderman Lopez
So just a reminder, we are voting, the resolution for authorizing the Mayor to purchase and if I'm wrong, it needs a more
senior Alderman can point it out, but legislation does actually say for an amount not to exceed $2,500,000. So it's been
commented on multiple times that this is a blank check. The price could become astronomical. Not as | read it. Again if
we authorize the Mayor to purchase, then that opens the door for him to number one - indicate the city's interested in the
property, and then number two, identify funding sources that were appropriately funded.
There's been a lot of lamenting of the situation with Camp Doucette. | would point out, | read about it in early last year,
like | want to say February of 2021, but it was like four months later that it actually sold. So what Alderman Klee has done
with her legislation was identify a community need and address it on behalf of her constituents. | would not want to see
authority for doing that in the future and say from now on everything that the Alderman we as legislators do, should be run
through city departments first because our constituents elect us. So we do have to take on these arguments. I'm sure
Alderman Klee wishes she had staff that could handle all of this, plan all of this, do all the feasibility studies that are being
proposed for this particular project. But we are elected to represent people and | think it's within the scope of our authority
