Yes, This Would Be Like That...

In a blog entry I posted last week, I asked a hypothetical (and real) question.

Everybody knows it was immoral, unethical, and illegal to use a $1.00 Food Stamp Bill to go to a store and buy a $.07 cent pack of kool aid, keeping the $.93 cents, and then repeating the process over and over until you cobbled enough money in change to buy what you really wanted (cigarettes and alcohol) but what you could not purchase with food stamps.  I saw people do this as a bagger when I worked at a local supermarket here in Pensacola in the 1980s.  It was ridiculous but nobody stopped the practice so it continued.....

But what about a county using LOST funding to purchase a property for "economic development" purposes (specifically allowed under statute)--and then subsequently selling such a property and depositing the proceeds not back into the LOST fund (where uses are restricted) but to the general fund instead(which has more flexibility with respect to what can be purchased/how the funds can be utilized)?  Nobody seemed to know for sure.

So I asked the question on Sunday--in writing.   Now we have the answer, (see below).  As I suspected, this shell game scheme  cannot be done.  Proceeds realized from the sale of property acquired with LOST funds must be deposited back into the same LOST fund from which such purchase funding originated.  So to the developer that thinks we should sell the OLF 8 property for "what we have in it and use the money to take care of operating expenses"--as I told you in person Friday, that is not legal.  see below.

Wouldn't This be Kind of Like That?

Of course it wasn't right and it wasn't  legal for people to purchase $.07 cent Kool Aid packs with $1.00 food stamps in order to cobble together enough change to buy alcohol and cigarettes........

There is now, officially, a movement afoot to pressure the Escambia Board of County Commissioners to "sell" the property in Beulah known as OLF 8 to the "private market" for "development....

Forget the fact that we do not even own it yet.  

Forget the fact that the plan from day one has been to develop that property to create jobs (good paying, high-tech manufacturing and assembly jobs).  

Forget the Restore Act Grant and the Triumph Grant that if pursued and won (The OLF 8 Commerce Park was the #1 Economic Development project as rated by the Restore Act Committee) would exponentially increase the value of that property (by injecting $Millions of dollars into the construction of infrastructure on that land) for the Escambia County taxpayers who have paid the bill to work toward acquiring that property.

Forget all of that.  

Now, all that matters is that this property be sold to the highest bidder so someone can double, triple, or quadruple what they spend for this and build more condos, townhomes, a private park,  single family homes, a giant parking lot, and a large open-space buffer-zone and low-wage service jobs on this site. ( we already have enough town homes and condos and single-family homes being built in Beulah--we have enough.  We also already have enough dead-end, low wage service sector jobs in Escambia County as well---we can do better!)

The logic goes a little something like this (paraphrased below), according to one developer with whom I recently spoke.

“Why don’t you sell the land for what you have in it, and let the private sector develop it, and you can use the proceeds to help with your budget problem over the next several years?”   

But wait a minute--would this even be legal?  I believe, even if we were to countenance the nonsense idea of selling the property outright, once we acquire it, for "what we have in it plus a dollar"--I believe those proceeds would have to go right back into our LOST fund--because that is where the money to acquire that property came from in the first place.  So I asked the question.  And I got a nebulous confirmation back that I am probably right about this.  

I mean, just imagine if counties around the state could sell property acquired by LOST funds and then subsequently dump those funds back into their respective general funds?!?could this not become a shell game that counties around the state could play when financial times get tough by “entering” the private real estate markets locally, purchasing “needed” buildings and property with LOST monies, and then turning around and “declaring surplus” and selling the same properties on the market (regardless of profit or loss—even if the sale price back was $.50 cents on the dollar) to generate desperately needed money for their respective general funds? 

To me this would be a shell game, and I can't imagine it would be legal.  As a matter of fact, it reminds me of what I witnessed back in the 1980's working as a bagger at a locally-owned supermarket chain here in Pensacola.  Parents would send their kids into the store, one at a time, over and over, with $1.00 dollar food stamp bills and they would purchase $.07 cent "kool aid" packs---and they would receive the change back in 

If you buy $.07 cent kool aid packets with $1.00 Bill Food Stamp coupons, you receive $.93 cents in change back in real money currency that can be used to purchase anything---that's why people did it--even though it wasn't right....

regular coin currency.  And they would do this over and over, until eventually the parent would come in and purchase a carton of Doral or Newport Cigarettes and a 12 pack of Bush--- all with loose change.  It was wrong, but it happened.  They