Hello,

I asked the city to tell me how much it would cost to repair the drainage problems and erosion damage on the land owned by the Cog Railway during the public comment process for the land swap in 2016.

At the meeting at Gold Camp Elementary School on February 24th, 2016, Sara Bryarly gave a presentation and she mentioned that the trail had those specific problems.

Here we are 6 years later, and the city is still refusing to answer this one simple question.

What has Rocky Mountain Field Institute told our Parks Dept. about how much it will cost to fix these problems?

We have owned that land for over 5 years, something is very wrong if our Parks Dept. has not obtained this information, or if the City Council has not obtained this information in response to my questions.

If there is a problem with that appraisal the city could delay their answer to my questions for a short time to devise an appropriate path forward and to research the legal issues, but not for 6 years.

City Officials are compelled to provide me with this information. It is undeniable that the city made a huge mistake by failing to provide the requested financial information during the public comment process.

As a Citizen, I have oversight on the public comment process. I have a right to the financial information that was withheld during the public comment process, and the public has a right to know about the omission.

The City Council approved the land swap because they felt that there was not enough opposition to the land swap, or that the opposition did not have enough valid objections to it.

The city made a procedural error at best. I requested relevant financial information and the city filed to provide it to the public. I questioned the merit of the Broadmoor's appraisal, and the city failed to satisfy my challenge.

This defeats the very purpose of the public comment process. There is every reason to believe that other citizens in our city may have felt differently about the land swap if this information had been provided.

The public was denied the ability to make a fully informed decision about the land swap.
The city has to inform the public that they did omit requested financial information during the public comment process.

Thank you, Carl Strow