Monmouth Lakes is going bankrupt after a bad deal with a developer:
In Mammoth Lakes’s case, its problems are rooted in the 1997 deal with Mammoth Lakes Land Acquisition. The town gave the developer the rights to build a hotel, residential and retail project near the local airport in exchange for making airport improvements. But the town backed out of the deal after the Federal Aviation Administration, which provided Mammoth Lakes with grants to improve the airport, objected to development nearby.
The developer sued in 2006 for breach of contract and was eventually awarded a $30 million judgment. The town exhausted its legal appeals last year, and the amount has grown to $43 million.
L.A. Times reports citizens are not only upset about the deal, but also at the “undercurrent of bungling by Town Council members and legal staffers because we lost the trial and we lost the appeal of the judgment,” according to one city councilman.
