There only 5 ways for the City to sell property authorized in City Code, Section 21. Despite the differences in each of these, every one requires either an auction or an independent appraisal to set the value of the sale. The thought behind this is to prevent the transfer of valuable public property to friends, family, or campaign donors at a cost which defrauds the public. There is a loophole for property worth less than $1,000 but this does not apply as the City has assessed this property for $435,100. There was no listing or record of an auction and no appraiser would value this property at $2. Further, the City is already providing enough funding so that to get the full value of the property would not be a problem. Finally, it would only take a month or so to follow the procedure and do this right.

The fact that the City did it wrong may be a bit embarrassing, but it should be troubling to all Rochestarians because it is obvious that there are some, whose salary we pay with our tax dollars, who have a callous disregard for law.

You can argue that this type of corporate welfare is necessary. (I do not.) But what happened here was the public was defrauded of hundreds of thousands of dollars which we, by law, are entitled to receive. This money could have gone to something that we need but was cut in the last budget due to lack of funds.

Unfortunately, there is little we can do about the government committing this crime. We have looked into filing a lawsuit, but that will cost $5000, money that small business owners such as myself cannot throw around. We will bring this to the City’s Office of Integrity, but I have little hope they will enforce the law either. The real solution is to vote the criminals who disregard the law out of office. But we can’t do that without your help.