Editor's note: This Speakout was submitted by Jacob Mills of Brookings.

One of the challenges with the city manager form of government we use in Brookings is that we lose institutional knowledge when there is turnover of long-term city staff. That challenge has been highlighted in this Brookings Marketplace discussion as most of the current city staff and city councilors were not around for the original negotiations with the DOT and consequently do not remember the full history of events that were involved in acquiring the property many years ago.

A former city councilor with some of that institutional knowledge was kind to provide me a copy of the Brookings Register from Dec. 7, 2013, which headlined with an article titled “DOT property has a long, complicated history here..

I’ll summarize two key points from that Ken Curley article, but the entire article is worth a read if you are interested in this topic. I have posted it on a website for viewing at https://sdbrookings.blogspot.com/. Or if you are like me, you can stop down at the Brookings Library and some very nice people there will help you find it on microfiche.

The first point I wanted to highlight from the 2013 Register article was that the early appraisals from the DOT which go back to around 2001 appraised the front 10 acres of the DOT (now Marketplace) land at $100,000 per acre ($2.29 per SF) and the back land behind it at $15,000 per acre ($0.34 per SF). So, there was a time when both the city and the state recognized that the frontage land was much easier to develop and therefore much more valuable. This is key to my opinion that our city has made a mistake in trying to sell this prime frontage 10 acres of land for the contracted price of $1.40 per SF. The city themselves once recognized over 20 years ago that this prime frontage was worth $2.29 per SF before they purchased it.

The second key point from Ken’s 2013 article is that prior to paying the DOT $1,600,000 to purchase the land from the state, Ken says the “City of Brookings was so eager to get the DOT to move, the council purchased land to the north of its [DOT] location for $20,000 per acre and then sold it to the state for $10,000 an acre — losing $200,000 in the deal”.

This fact was unknown to me until I read the article, but it highlights the acquisition cost of the Marketplace property was actually $1,800,000 ($1.59 per SF including the loss on land trade) and is one more way to show how much the city is losing in this deal with Ryan Companies at $1.40 per SF more than 10 years later.

The city needs to renegotiate this bad deal and should be paid a fair value for these most valuable prime 10 acres. This vote is not about yes or no to ALDI. We can have ALDI in Brookings and have a fair value paid for the Marketplace land. I hope you will join me in voting “no” on this Jan. 30 special election.