Posted under #2.5 Million tax money
Click on links above for photos…
Smart woman uses
Taxpayer’s dollars
This is a reprinted story from Dixon’s Independent Voice Newspaper.
By Ted Hickman
(Editor’s note: This is a complex, controversial and drawn out local micro-drama which has played out over the past five years with threats of law suits and ill will running rampant among the participants. The following is a brief factual description put in fairly simple terms by one of our investigative reporters.)
A Sacramento woman with a local business in Dixon could give a seminar on how to manipulate the system, end up with a multi-million dollar project, get rid of partners and invest relative little her own funds in the process.
The controversial redevelopment of the old fire station in downtown Dixon has been a five years process granted in pieces by a couple of different Dixon City councils acting as the Dixon Redevelopment Agency. Controversy has dogged the project since day one.
The old fire house was built in about 1916, added on to in 1929 and added on again in about 1968. The current “redevelopment project” was started in 2004 with Christina Wiley of Sacramento and two local partners; Seth Jacobs and Troy Stevens and it had “tentative loan approval in 2005. In 2006 the partnership was “dissolved” (a polite term for ditched) and a new loan process was started. A second loan was approved but the lender “withdrew the loan” for whatever reason.
In 2008 a lender was finally secured for an SBA (government backed Small Business Loan) which is lender number three. All permits and plan check were approved in 2008 and the building is hoped to be completed by Valentine’s Day in 2010. Last week the demolition of the rear of the building was completed (see photo above).
Here’s the kickers. The city approved a redevelopment loan (of taxpayer’s money) for $750,000 and reduced the interest rate to 2% to provide an additional no interest loan of $140,000 money to purchase the property and to provide a $150,000 grant (which doesn’t have to be repaid) for seismic retrofitting. The loans have to be paid back in 10 to 20 years with the first payments not starting until after 10 years. Wiley now owns the building and land.
Wiley put in $300,000 from some source and got an SBA loan for $1.2 million which brings the total project in at over $2.5 million dollars, most of which is in taxpayer’s dollars one way or the other.
What do the taxpayers get out of this? Wiley reportedly will have a dental office upstairs and another office for rent plus a restaurant downstairs that she will own, but have others run for her. Meanwhile the taxpayers will have the satisfaction of knowing they helped this Sacramento woman make a killing in little old Dixon redoing a historical building with the possibility of turning a good return on a minor investment. It all appears to be legal and anyone probably could have done the same thing…but she is the one left standing and holding title to the building, land and project.
Want to build some senior housing downtown or tear down or retrofit some old buildings? Want to retrofit some of the old downtown buildings (which will very possibly collapse in an earthquake with the strength of the one several years ago in Coalinga)? Want some redevelopment funds for yourself? Just try and get some…You might want to talk to Wiley first and see how to work the system…that is if there are any funds left for needed projects.
