The Farm should be preserved, not bulldozed. Keep scrolling for the case against this development project.

Listen to Jesse’s latest radio interview

Our friend Jesse has now done two interviews about the Dingee Farm on public radio. Listen to his latest appearance on WMDX’s John & Gordy show on May 2nd. Click below!

What are the rules governing closed sessions?

Repeated reliance on closed sessions has been a running theme throughout this entire debate. Why is the Council so willing to shut itself behind closed doors and deny the public any insight into their reasoning? The state of Wisconsin Department of Justice has a long, detailed document on open meetings, which discusses this topic at length. Check it out at the link below and ask yourself — is the City following this guidance? We believe they are not. If you don’t have time to read all of it, page 29 of the document (page 35 of the PDF) discusses closed sessions specifically. And demand that your City operates in accordance with this guidance.

”[M]ere inconvenience, delay, embarrassment, frustration, or even speculation as to the probability of success would be an insufficient basis to close a meeting.”

“[A] desire or request for confidentiality by a private developer engaged in negotiations with a city was not sufficient to justify a closed session for competitive or bargaining reasons.”

Columbus has to grow, why do you hate development?

We couldn’t agree more that Columbus needs more housing and more taxpayers. Housing availability and affordability is a nationwide crisis and Columbus is no exception. That said, we believe that the City should be thinking bigger. Bulldozing a community icon for a handful of homes is not worth the trade-off.

Furthermore, the Dingee Farm is a horrible candidate for development. First, there are no sewer lines. Second, there is over an acre of concrete pad that would need to be removed, in addition to a derelict septic system and two concrete silos. Third, new roads would be required and no one has yet addressed how the developer would overcome the state right-of-way issues that the City Attorney brought up last year (see the email here). Again, the City should be thinking bigger and better.

Ok, we need housing, so where does it go?

We’ve been accused of not being city planners, and that would be correct. That’s why we were so glad to hear the City Engineer give his presentation on December 27th. In it, he informed the Mayor and Council that there are 121 parcels of vacant or underdeveloped land already within City limits. That totals over 1,000 acres, according to his presentation. If you’d like to see that presentation, you can see it on the City’s website here. If you start at 39:00, you can listen to the whole thing.

If there are 1000+ acres of land within City limits already, let’s think bigger than these 7.5 acres and in the process, save a community icon. Just because the last Council stuck the City with a poor decision doesn’t mean we have to continue down that path.

Well this is the land we have. It would be stupid and costly not to develop it.

Let’s talk about cost, then. The proposal that the outgoing Council accepted just prior to the election grants the land to this developer for $1. That’s $559,999 out the door that the City could have used on any of its other needs (roads, public safety, schools, etc.). Granted, that transaction occurred long ago and is settled, so let’s focus on the future costs.

The developer’s plan puts City taxpayers on the hook for half a million dollars in expenses. Perversely, the developer will be charging City taxpayers to demolish the barns and other outbuildings. Columbus taxpayers have repeatedly come out in force to Council meetings to express their desire to save the Farm. Now, those same taxpayers will be paying for the demolition of the very farm they hoped to save. See the below excerpt from the plan that the previous Council accepted:

Also on the topic of cost, as we mentioned, the Dingee Farm is a terrible candidate for development. In particular, installing sewer lines will likely cost significantly more than the developer is stating. When we investigated sewer line installation, simply connecting the house and barns to a sewer line was going to cost $225,000 including design and construction. The developer puts the City on the hook for half a million dollars to cover demolition and infrastructure. What will happen when there are cost overruns? It seems likely that the developer would come to the City again, asking for more money.

I heard there was veterans housing, that sounds like a good idea.

Some folks in town have heard the developer will be building veterans’ housing on the Farm. There is nothing in the developer’s proposal that indicates they have any intention of putting veterans’ housing there. Read the full proposal for yourself here. If you’re thinking that the proposal is short and doesn’t contain a lot of detail, we agree. The Council chose not to have a formal presentation by the developer, possibly because they were trying to rush this decision before the election.