180 Million $$$ Promise

180 million dollar promise.
Minturn Town council promised the citizens 180 million dollars if they voted yes to Dean Adler's Battle Mountain Project.
So four years ago the citizens voted yes. The day after the vote council refused to deliver on the 180 million dollar promise.

Remember Shelly Bellm, Minturn council member, told us four years ago that Dean Adler had "no outs" and that we would have that money the day after the vote. Seems Shelly lied to the citizens.

Council has now given 11 million dollars of the escrow money to Dean Adler and we have gotten 600,000 dollars.
Doesn't seem fair does it.

We need to demand that 2.3 million dollars be used for recreation center, bike paths or sidewalks, instead of for water infrastructure like council wants.
Dean Adler is supposed to pay for infrastructure.

Contact me at frank@minturntimes.com if you have other ideas for the 2.3 million dollars.

We have a 2006 waste water contract that states that Dean Adler will build sewer plant even if he doesn't get approval for his 2008 Battle Mountain Project. So we should of had the sewer plant built by now, but council refuses to even enforce that contract.

So we should at least have the sewer and water plant by now and we should have the 11.6 million dollars.
With those items we would have lower water and sewer rates, a recreation center, improvements to Little Beach Park, a college scholarship fund for our citizens kids, 2 million for bike paths.

Click here to read an article on the early days of the Dean Adler/Ginn project

Minturn's 11.6 million,

Well it seems I was right again.

I have been telling the Minturn citizens for four years that we could of gotten the 11.6 million dollars, sitting in an escrow account, the day after the vote in 2008, but council said we couldn't because of pending lawsuits. Well, lawsuits are still pending and guess what? We just got some of the 11.6 million dollars. I wanted the full 11.6 million for the citizens.

Now let me tell you the true amount we get out of the 11.6 million. It is not the 4.3 million like council said.

First off, Dean Adler gets 7.3 million up front.

Of the 4.3 million to us, we have to kick back 1.4 million to Dean Adler for lawsuits and administration fees. Lawsuits and admin fees are all Adler's responsibility not ours.

That now leaves 2.9 million. 250,000 towards Little Beach Park improvements, 350,000 for scholarship fund.

We then have 2.3 million left and council wants to spend it on water infrastructure. This is an item that Adler needed to pay for separately.

So out of 11.6 million dollars we really only get 600,000 and Adler gets 11 million dollars.

Thank goodness our town council is helping out a struggling billionaire.

While Minturn council raises the Minturn citizens water and trash rates and gives bonuses to our town staff and refuses to repair our streets and put in sidewalks to make our town safer for the citizens they have the biggest heart to give away 11 million dollars to the billionaire Dean Adler of Lubert-Adler Investments.

We also have a 2006 waste water agreement that is worth about 21 million dollars for land purchase and building the waste water plant. But council refuses to enforce it.

I told the truth about us never getting the entire 180 million dollars that was promised us.

I told the truth that we could get the 11.6 million while there were pending lawsuits.

I am telling the truth that we can get the 21 million dollars.

I will be pushing council to use that 2.3 million for citizens benefits like bikepaths or recreation center, etc. instead of water infrastructure or at least lower our water rates.