Mr. Ken Stewart, President of the Hesperia Development Corp which is a 100% owned company with one shareholder, namely the City of Vernon addressed Council on Monday and answered the 8 written questions submitted by Councillor Beardsell (the rest of Council had no questions). He then went on and answered the questions and observations submitted by the Vernon Taxpayers Association.
The questions were answered in the above order and after the presentation there were few questions from the Council and none allowed from the attentive audience that had gathered to hear these answers. There were no questions allowed because this had not been advertised as a public input session and consequently none could be heard under that particular section of the community charter. The Hesperia President had concluded his remarks by inviting questions both from the Council members and the audience but he was stymied from taking audience questions directly at this time.
He did invite further questions to be sent to Hesperia by phone at 250-540-0720 or e-mail: hesperiadevelopment@shaw.ca
These contract details were listed on the 4 page handout entitled Hesperia Land -Planning for Attainable Housing.
The answers to the submitted questions elicited responses that were illuminating in some regards, troubling with regards the interface between the Corporation and the real shareholders (the taxpayers of Vernon) that will reveal the progress of this new housing initiative, and informative of what the perceived mandate of this arms length new corporation is from the corporations viewpoint. Some of the figures cited were too broad ranged for my liking and the DCC figures and their expected costs or credits bear much more scrutiny if they are to be accepted as part of a valid business reason for continuing this venture.
While I learned some new facts and figures and projections I will still have to await the answer to my main concern, the appraisal of the value of 69 acres of land if sold at highest use configuration. There was acknowledgment during the questioning that there was an appraisal done by a local appraiser (R.Mc) and this appraisal will be given to interested members of council. As this was a City appraisal the President of Hesperia was in no position to authorize its release to the public and any such release would have to be authorized by the Council.
It is my hope that the City will publish the answers to these questions asap on their website. This will enable the public to judge the validity and value of this new enterprise.
A publicly released copy of the actual appraisal so we can determine if there is any subsidy for these housing units would be important. The President of Hesperia maintains that there is no subsidy and while this might turn out to be a semantic argument I still must maintain that if the projected dividends and revenue eventually returned to to the City in the future is less than what the City could pocket now if the Land was sold to the highest bidder then the difference is a subsidy.
It is then up to Council to decide if that subsidy should be paid to obtain x number of units of attainable housing of if that amount of subsidy money could be better used as matching monies to built affordable and senior government sponsored housing.
Remember the Attainable Housing envisioned in this proposal is to provide housing that is attainable by a target population whose family income is $56,000 to 100,000.
It was also mentioned that the Hesperia Corporations had already had produced its first year audited financial statements. It would be beneficial if these statements could be produced on the City's website. (They were probably consolidated into the full financial statements of the City but the breakout of the original must be available for publication.)
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