Check out this item on the July 9th Council meeting: http://boisecityid.iqm2.com/Citizens/Detail_LegiFile.aspx?Frame=&MeetingID=3355&MediaPosition=&ID=12447&CssClass=.

The original contract was for $20K – under the limit for open and advertised bidding. It has since ballooned to over 10 times that amount, well beyond the statutory limit for, at the minimum, and Informal Bid. No Department in the City would have been allowed to skirt the law like this. Once again, the Mayor’s office plays by its own rules, legality be damned. But Council can’t claim they didn’t know about this one…

Take the $84 million in voter approved bond money that Salt Lake City determined they needed for their 2003 Safdie design (nearly identical to Boise’s) and plug that amount into an online inflation calculator?

It comes up with a cost of $114,635,804 in 2018 dollars.

That would have been a simple test to understand that this groups product was way, way, way out of their league, due to the fact that the City had a $65 million budget during the interview vetting process.

Citizens can not directly put a project up for vote, so the petition was not a direct vote for the current proposed projects. The citizens could not convince the City to take that direct action, as most cities do when major expenditure of public funds are involved.

This left the only choice of a petition to have a vote this fall, that would then set a City Ordinance (law) which requires the City to conduct a citizen vote for any type of a library project costing $25 million or more, and any type of a sports stadium project to cost $5 million or more, both with public monies.

This vote will be on the ballot this fall, and so will the Mayor and 3 Council Member seats! What the City chooses to do between now and then is going to be interesting.

How special.

Keep watching…

Unless not one single additional employee will be needed to staff a significantly larger facility, this continues to be a misrepresentation of the impact. And the City’s own FY 2020 budget says,

Potential operating costs associated with the Main Library project, budgeted in FY 2019, are still being evaluated.

Without knowing what the operating costs will be, how can the City truthfully say this project will not increase taxes. The library project study conducted in 2000 shows the costs for operations as, “total additional costs over the current costs” as $2,656,785. And that was without an expensive book robot that can run around $1 million a year.

They are going to save $$ by not purchasing vehicles? Hah! Have you seen a white Boise City vehicle that’s more than 2 years old?

Do they charge the airport for the central services provided (HR, accounting, etc.)? There’s some $$. Do they charge the other agencies that generate their own revenue?

When will sewer rates go through the roof? Franchise fees charged to cable TV and utilities (which will get passed on to the citizens)?

There are a dozen more ways for the city to tap us directly or indirectly. Watch it happen.