Mayor Dale and the Urban Renewal crew are, for the moment, stalled out on building a new police station and library for the city of Nampa without voter approvals. Team Tom is content to not have voters weigh in on the projects and wants to cloak the project and stop all voter involvement via the Nampa Development Corporation (aka Urban Renewal).
THE GUARDIAN reported earlier this Summer Mayor Dale and his Chief of Police paid a visit to the Commishes trying to get them to agree to a long term lease of "Class A" office space for lease costs of $20/square foot. Now it is getting reported in the local paper they wanted to sell the county the entire second floor of the building for $2.65 Million. In any event the Commissioners wisely backed away from the offer from Team Tom as it would have been a violation of the Idaho Constitution to enter into a long term contract without a vote of the people.
Article 8 Sec. 3 of the Idaho Constitution forbids going into debt beyond one budget cycle for any debt, liability or obligation. Commissioner Ferdinand pointed this out to Team Tom when they paid their visit to 115 Albany this past Summer.
The deal would have entailed handing over the newly remodeled Canyon County Annex to the city of Nampa so they could tear it down for a parking lot. They would have received a $900,000 "credit" good for the first years rent on the new digs. Again, the Commishes wisely backed off this deal.
In the interim, the Supreme Court has now decided the cities must reimburse the counties for their costs of holding court in the cities where they operate separate courtrooms from the courthouse locations. We don't know if the Commishes have made a move on handing the city of Nampa a bill for the costs of running the Nampa Annex to Team Tom or not.
THE GUARDIAN has Team Tom bottled up in the Supreme Court for the moment with his Urban Renewal scheme to get around Nampa voters. There is another case in Rexburg that is similar and if Mr. Ken Hart wins his case against Rexburg's Urban Renewal Agency the Nampa case will also go down for the count against Nampa.
Meanwhile, we all wait and hope citizens and voters are put back into the capital budgeting process of our cities via bond elections. Mayor Tom has no faith in the people of Nampa supporting the police station and library projects and simply will not allow citizens to vote on the projects.
It has been reported to THE GUARDIAN the Mac's Toys and Hobbies building with 43,000 square feet of space is on the market for $943,000. It is high time our elected Politcos figure out we need to start recycling buildings. Boise Police and Fire figured this one out and have some really nice new digs and a very low cost to the taxpayers. The Mac's building could be purchased and recycled with a serial levy that would raise Nampa property taxes for just two years and the coppers and fire guys would have all the space they need close to the new freeway interchange.
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