Barnum Promised Answers. A Month Later, It Sent a Form.
City confirms public land will be transferred to Ideal Homes — but leaves major questions about value, affordability, taxpayer protections and the deal itself unanswered
By Carlton County Watch
When Carlton County Watch published Affordable to Whom? on August 3, we identified a series of unanswered questions surrounding Barnum's proposed five-home housing development with Carlton County and Ideal Homes.
The questions were not particularly exotic.
How much is the City-owned land worth?
What will Ideal Homes pay for it?
How much public money will be invested?
Who will qualify to purchase the homes?
Why are houses expected to cost approximately $250,000 being described as “affordable” in a community where the estimated median household income is substantially lower than what may be necessary to afford them?
And perhaps most importantly: what prevents a purchaser from receiving the benefit of publicly subsidized land and housing assistance and subsequently converting that public subsidy into private profit?
A month later, most of those questions remain unanswered.
But Barnum has now confirmed one important fact:
The City intends to transfer its land to Ideal Homes.
And according to the City, a purchase agreement exists.
Barnum confirms the land transfer
On August 4, Carlton County Watch submitted 15 categories of questions to Barnum officials concerning the project.
The inquiry expressly told the City that it was not a Minnesota Government Data Practices Act request.
Instead, Carlton County Watch explained that it was preparing follow-up reporting and wanted to give the City an opportunity to explain the project before government records were formally requested. The purpose was straightforward: answers from the City could help identify what records actually existed and allow any eventual public-data request to be narrow and precise.
Barnum Clerk-Treasurer responded that same afternoon.
She explained that the funding arrangement was between Carlton County Economic Development and Ideal Homes and said:
“the City of Barnums investment was the transfer of the land to Ideal homes”
The Clerk further stated that a purchase agreement requires Ideal Homes to comply with the funding requirements and stipulations associated with the project.
That response provides an important new piece of information.
When Carlton County Watch published Affordable to Whom?, the publicly available records did not establish the final terms under which the City's land would be transferred.
Now the City has confirmed both a land transfer to Ideal Homes and the existence of a purchase agreement.
What Barnum has not explained is what that agreement actually says.
“I will answer the other questions next week”
Two minutes after her initial August 4 response, the Clerk sent another email.
She explained that she was out of state on vacation and wrote:
“I will answer the other questions next week.”
Carlton County Watch waited.
The following week passed.
Then another.
Then another.
By August 31 — nearly four weeks after the original inquiry — the promised responses still had not arrived.
Carlton County Watch therefore sent a brief follow-up asking the City to provide additional information.
The response this time was quite different.
Suddenly, it was a “data request”
On September 1, the City wrote:
“I have forwarded your data request to the City Attorney, please fill out the attached data request so I can forward to him.”
There was an immediate problem.
Carlton County Watch had never submitted a data request.
The original August 4 message expressly said exactly the opposite:
“This message is an informal press and public-information inquiry and is not presently intended as a request under the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act.”
On September 1, Carlton County Watch reminded the City of that distinction.
We also told Barnum that we were perfectly willing to submit a formal government-data request — but first asked the City to answer the questions it had already promised to answer so any records request could be intelligently directed toward the relevant documents.
We also asked another simple question:
Was the City's attached data-access policy really current?
As of publication, the City has not answered.
A data-access policy dated 2011
That question deserves attention of its own.
The document Barnum provided is titled:
“City of Barnum — Data Access Policy for Members of the Public.”
Every page identifies it as:
“Adopted July 11, 2011.”
That makes the document supplied by Barnum more than 15 years old.
Minnesota law currently requires something considerably different.
Minn. Stat. § 13.025, subd. 2 provides that a responsible authority must maintain a written public-data-access policy and update it no later than August 1 of every year, as well as whenever changes in personnel, procedures, or other circumstances affect the public's ability to obtain government data.
The document's 2011 adoption date does not, standing alone, establish that Barnum has violated that requirement. The City may possess evidence that the policy has been reviewed or updated annually, or it may have a newer policy that was simply not provided.
That is why Carlton County Watch asked.
Is this really Barnum's current data-access policy?
When was it last updated?
So far, there has been no answer.
And the form itself is apparently optional
There is another oddity.
Barnum instructed Carlton County Watch to “fill out” the City's attached data-request form.
But Barnum's own policy says using that form is optional.
The policy states that members of the public “may” make a request using the form and then expressly explains what someone should include in a written request “if you choose not to use the data request form.”
So even if Carlton County Watch's August 4 email had been a government-data request — which it expressly was not — the City's own policy does not appear to require use of its particular form.
The issue would be almost comical if the underlying transaction did not involve public property and public housing assistance.
Barnum is not legally required to answer every question
There is an important distinction.
The Minnesota Government Data Practices Act generally governs access to existing government data. It does not require a municipality to conduct an interview, answer every reporter's question, perform research, or create information that does not already exist.
Barnum's own policy expressly makes that point: the Data Practices Act does not require the City to answer questions that are not requests for data.
Carlton County Watch does not contend otherwise.
But there is a considerable difference between what government officials are legally compelled to say and what residents reasonably expect public officials to explain when public assets are being placed into a private development.
Barnum could have simply said on August 4:
We decline to answer your questions. Request the underlying records instead.
It did not.
The City answered one portion of the inquiry.
It confirmed the land transfer.
It confirmed a purchase agreement.
And it promised to answer the remaining questions the following week.
Then it did not.
Nearly a month later, the promised answers had been replaced by a form.
The unanswered questions have not disappeared
Paperwork does not answer the underlying questions.
Residents still do not know, based upon the City's response:
What the land being transferred to Ideal Homes is worth.
What Ideal Homes will pay the City for that property.
Whether an independent appraisal was obtained.
What consideration taxpayers receive in exchange for the land.
Why the City rejected the competing $26,000 offer.
How much public subsidy will be invested in each home.
What Ideal Homes will earn from the project.
Which households qualify to purchase the houses.
What income level the project is actually designed to serve.
How an approximately $250,000 sales price was determined to be “affordable.”
Whether purchasers must occupy the homes.
Whether the homes can immediately be rented.
Whether they can immediately be resold for a profit.
Whether public subsidies must be repaid upon resale.
Whether any affordability requirement survives the initial sale.
Those were essentially the same questions Carlton County Watch identified in Phase One.
A month later, they remain substantially unanswered.
The next step will be the records
The City's silence does not end the inquiry.
It simply changes it.
Carlton County Watch will now proceed with targeted requests for the underlying government data necessary to independently reconstruct the transaction, including the purchase agreement referenced by the City, deeds and conveyance documents, property valuations, communications with Ideal Homes and Carlton County, funding agreements, project budgets, affordability calculations, buyer requirements, resale restrictions and other documents establishing exactly what the public is contributing and what the public receives in return.
We will also seek clarification concerning the City's public-data policies and whether the document bearing a July 11, 2011 adoption date is the policy Barnum presently relies upon.
If officials choose not to explain a public transaction, the documents can speak for themselves.
Transparency should not require a guessing game
Carlton County Watch remains open to publishing Barnum's explanation.
There may be perfectly reasonable answers.
The land transfer may be supported by an appraisal.
The public subsidy may be carefully calculated.
The homes may be restricted to qualifying purchasers.
The purchase agreement may contain strong anti-flipping provisions, affordability covenants and taxpayer protections.
Ideal Homes may have substantial contractual obligations in exchange for receiving the property.
If so, residents deserve to know that.
But public officials should not expect residents to simply assume those protections exist.
The City owns the land.
Public housing money is involved.
A private company will receive the property and build homes for private purchasers.
Those circumstances do not make the project improper.
They make transparency essential.
On August 4, Carlton County Watch asked Barnum to help provide it.
The City promised answers.
Thirty days later, what arrived instead was a form.
And the original question remains: