Comments on: CWI Appraisal Tops Purchase Price

By: JJ

JJ — Fri, 24 Jul 2015 15:26:40 +0000

It is worth pointing out that CWI has basically one building on their Nampa campus surrounded by 50-60 acres of vacant land. That campus is served by inter-county express bus routes and conveniently located near I-84. CWI students can ride all VRT fixed routes for free. There is zero need for CWI to buy new land at a premium in Boise, when their current campus is surrounded by vacant land. This is financially irresponsible and contrary to their mission to be low-cost education.

By: chicago sam

chicago sam — Fri, 24 Jul 2015 00:28:11 +0000

What is important is that with it’s tremendous success CWI has come to the fork in the road.
Do they spend nearly $9 million on a piece of property that may have environmental, flood plan, transportation and the ever present design review committee in Boise or do they take that $9 million and invest it in their Nampa campus where that amount of money would go a long way for classroom and other space which they could start replacing immediately. These buildings are now scattered over 14 different locations with relatively high lease rates.
If they choose to build in Boise a long drawn out battle over bonding is a sure bet. $140 million has been mentioned. They should back out of the Boise purchase and return to the original plan for a Nampa campus–debt free—where there is plenty of space.

By: boisecynic

boisecynic — Thu, 23 Jul 2015 11:28:31 +0000

You guys are beating a dead horse.

I’m pretty sure the assessor’s office uses the completed sales price by square foot method. It’s cheap and easy and the assessment was in the ball park using that method. The cost to build method is not applicable because it’s raw land.

The only other method of appraisal is called the income method which is more difficult and time consuming. Do you really want to pay the assessors office for the extra staff it would take to do an income method appraisal on all the county’s commercial properties?

Who’s going to do the cost benefit analysis?

Anyway, the issue now is to convince the Rice Family not to sell to CWI, convince CWI to find another lot or convince the city/state to intervene. It might take a state legislative action to ban tax exempt entities from buying in urban renewal districts. For Pete’s sake, they just banned the use of eminent domain to build trails like the greenbelt, even though trails like the greenbelt have almost certainly increased state tax revenues even though the state didn’t spend a dime to build the greenbelt.

Why doesn’t the MSM have the nerve to ask the Mayor and council how they feel about their latest urban renewal district losing about 25% of its future revenue?

What happens if a tax exempt entity buys the SE corner of 30th and Main and ditto that for the SE corner of 27th and Fairview?

By: Brad

Brad — Thu, 23 Jul 2015 02:06:13 +0000

If I understand correctly. The Assessor, Bob McQuade, assessed this property at $4,049,080 with taxes paid of $62,194.86. The property is really worth double the assessed value. Then the commercial property should have generated twice the taxes actually collected – for many years.
By extension, does that mean that the Assessor may have undervalued other commercial property, too, in the county causing the average person to pay more on their personal homes to make up for the spending of the various tax-supported agencies.
The county will see this $62,194 tax revenue go away with a tax exempt school and new tax increases needed to fuel CWI growth.

By: J Smith

J Smith — Wed, 22 Jul 2015 23:24:00 +0000

If we the people are paying for the river front property, we should consider putting in a park or wildlife habitat, and locating large structures away from flood prone areas. If it must be a large structure, how about a wonderful new library with river views. It looks a lot like the only ones seeing the view will be CWI muckety mucks.

By: JJ

JJ — Wed, 22 Jul 2015 19:28:51 +0000

Reference the April 28th Guardian article, County Assessor Bob McQuade is required to have land value at market value and his office concluded the $3.5M value was “in the ball park”.

A current appraised value of 2-3 times the assessed value is not even close to the ball park. Is the county assessor inept or the appraiser for CWI?

How can anyone have any confidence in the assessor or an appraiser with such disparity? How are the tax payers who fund CWI assured this is a reasonable price and investment?

By: Zippo

Zippo — Wed, 22 Jul 2015 18:21:29 +0000

How big of money grab will CWI be making on my property taxes now and in the future?

Has anyone done a cost benefit analysis of CWI vs. the typical low-middle homeowner taxpayer?

Exactly what will the new land be used for?

How much driving from campus to campus does a CWI student do?

What’s the status of the student loan bubble?

By: Casmir

Casmir — Wed, 22 Jul 2015 17:25:26 +0000

Regardless of the price of the property – is Boise State not in our “community”? I’ve never understood why a second college is needed right down the road from another – doubling infrastructure costs, administrative costs and teaching costs for taxpayers. And how is it that “tuition” at one, is so dramatically lower than at another? And why can BSU not serve the needs of our community/State at a reasonable cost, especially considering how awash they are in athletic revenue? Maybe someone in the educational arena could explain that to me.

By: Easterner

Easterner — Wed, 22 Jul 2015 15:48:28 +0000

oohhhh that’s gotta make some butts hurt for some people.

Press-Tribune reports the original asking price was 10 million.

So, as I mentioned previously the story here is, “Why is the County Assessment so Messed Up?”
Bob Rice Partnership has been paying too little in property taxes for quite some time.

This is just one example of shortfalls in the assessor’s office and why “the rest of us” pay more. Let’s go back to a 2007 story for another: https://boiseguardian.com/2007/06/26/ag-exemption-is-dirty-secret/

By: chicago sam

chicago sam — Wed, 22 Jul 2015 15:13:31 +0000

Not surprising as CWI has already hired an architect to design the building on property which in no way has even passed the due diligence phase. It is damn the torpedoes full speed ahead. We know what we want to do and just get out of the way.
Difficult to understand why they spent money for 23 acres in Nampa which just gives them another driveway and are willing to spend millions in Boise for a postage stamp area with flood plain and transportation problems.