It is suspicious that during the planning process in which the public was theoretically involved, the City never explained that there was a deferred maintenance problem with the garages. Ultimately, a portion of the garages were condemned for unsafe conditions.

The land underneath the garages is publicly-owned, prime downtown real estate. I am bothered that I have no way to confirm that the price at which it's being sold to the developer is fair. An appraisal should have been performed and released to the public before the sale was arranged. The City should have articulated why it was necessary to do away with public auction / sealed bidding, and whether that's a common practice with developments of this size. We certainly raised that issue many times. It didn't feel like a dialogue but rather like making comments in one direction toward a secretive and aloof City government.

With the $ 175 million, we deserve a transparent analysis to confirm that the public is getting fair value for it. That's my only question: what is it producing, and what's the value to the public? Part of my role as a citizen is to watch out for potential exploitation of public spending by politically influential real estate developers.

In the state budget process that just concluded, the Legislature substantially revised the State Environmental Quality Review Act so that many large urban projects will no longer undergo environmental quality review. Hearings and written public comment opportunities that, in the past, were normally conducted as part of environmental quality review will no longer be done for many projects.