Scott Nassif: ‘No confidence’ in AVRWC takeover (September 21, 2015)
To hear our Town leaders tell it, everyone supports the Town’s hostile takeover of Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company (except Ranchos and a couple of disgruntled residents), the Town has a budget for the seizure, and everything is going just peachy.
You have to wonder, then, why Councilman Scott Nassif has requested information on the feasibility of installing a well at James Woody Park for irrigation purposes
?
Installing a well could take $750,000 to $900,000 (according to the Town’s water expert Dennis Cron), meaning that after construction of the well, it could take 7.5 to 9.5 years to amortize the costs, but only if the Town doesn’t seize Ranchos. Otherwise, it just spent a million bucks duplicating something it already bought.
You see, if the Town succeeds in seizing Ranchos, it will then own a well nearby, as part of the Ranchos system. In that case, it might be impossible for the Town to amortize the new well. It would just be money down the drain, so to speak.
On the other hand, if the takeover doesn’t go through, then the Town will be watering its multi-million dollar golf course with recycled water from its multi-million dollar recycling facility, so it won’t need the multi-million dollar water rights it bought with the multi-million dollar golf course, so those water rights could be used if only it had a million dollar well at James Woody Park. In which case, it would kinda make sense, except that the Town is still spending full-speed-ahead on taking over Ranchos.
Confusing? You don’t know the half of it.
— Greg Raven is Co-Chair of Apple Valley Citizens for Government Accountability, and is concerned about quality of life issues.