The Observation Deck

Reality Check -- Context

Now, keep in mind the context of all of this.

The city administration and civic leadership are liquidating, closing, and demolishing the City's largest "off-book" asset -- Lakewood Hospital.

At the same time, they fully understand that the City has an "off-book" liability as high as $275,000,000 -- An unfunded federal mandate for sewer/stormwater infrastructure upgrades.

Sheer incompetence? Or, staggering incompetence? You be the judge.

Demolition, Remediation, Preparation

Lakewood is probably unique in Ohio history as the only city to choose to demolish an award-winning community hospital when it had a major proposal to maintain continuity in hospital operations from a highly-qualified health care system.

Our city fathers accepted demolition payments totaling $7,000,000 to do so. Those funds will be spent, at no cost to the developer, to benefit the developer by demolition, remediation and preparation of the Lakewood Hospital site.

If the City carefully manages the use of those funds, it might have a net "gain" on these costs.

However, never forget that this "gain" is illusory, since it comes from the liquidation and demolition of major public assets in return for relatively nominal amounts.

We Took A Complete Bath II

Even accepting the City's position that the hospital was non-viable and that the building is worthless, we can see that the range of loss for assets and revenues is significant.

Now having reviewed most of the hospital-related transaction amounts from the 2018 revenue spreadsheet and crediting the City with future development-related revenues, we can see that the loss is in this range.

Range of Loss: $14,403,229 to $40,703,028

Next we will review whether or not, the liquidation of certain other non-hospital-related assets would materially off-set the range of loss on the liquidation and demolition of Lakewood Hospital.

Clue: They will not.

Let's see now---- I can see a piece of campaign literature featuring a picture of certain incumbents at the "ceremonies" as the wrecking ball smashes into Lakewood Hospital along side of their votes for an unprecedented financial loss that can never be recovered.
Stan Austin

Moving the loss spreadsheets to a new Post.

"Measuring the Damage"

http://lakewoodobserver.com/forum/viewt ... =7&t=25049