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EDITOR'S NOTE: Following are excerpts from a Q & A background report prepared by Edward Casey, attorney for the Attleboro Redevelopment Authority. His complete essay can be found at thesunchronicle.ning.com/forum/topics/questions-and-answers-about.

What is a "redevelopment authority?"

The Massachusetts Legislature created a redevelopment authority in each city and town, but left it to each to decide whether there was a need for a redevelopment authority. The Attleboro Municipal Council determined there was such a need, and voted on Sept. 7, 1965 to create the Attleboro Redevelopment Authority, subsequently approved by the mayor.

The redevelopment authority is governed by five members, with staggered five-year terms, four of whom are appointed by the mayor and one by the state.

What is the purpose of a redevelopment authority?

State law allows municipalities, through their redevelopment authorities, to develop land for industrial, commercial, residential, recreational and educational purposes.

What is the source of funding for the ARA?

The ARA has sought and secured a variety of federal and state loans and capital grants, as well as loans from a local bank. Some of those funds contain restrictions on the use to which they may be put. For many years, until 2008, the city had provided to the ARA substantial funds for the ARA's operations, which the ARA had used to pay for its operational expenses. In 2008 the city administration decided not to provide any CDBG funds to the ARA.

What are the present financial problems of the ARA?

The ARA owes money that it cannot currently pay. First, in August 2008, a Fall River jury rendered a verdict that the ARA owed approximately $1 million to property owners who had sued because those owners did not believe that they had received sufficient compensation for the taking of their lands. Second, the sale of land to prospective buyers were cancelled, in part because of the inability to deliver the parcels within the timeline. Third, the general deterioration of economic activity in this area, and across the nation, has weakened demand for industrial or business development. Without land sales, the ARA will be unable to generate funds with which to pay its debts.

Yet, the current economic crisis will pass, and real estate experts acknowledge that the demand for industrial land will return.

Why wasn't the ARA better prepared to pay the judgment?

In 2005 the ARA board of directors had reviewed the reports of two competent appraisers, who had independently valued the land. The board members, and the appropriate parties in DHCD, concluded the appraisals were properly completed. The board members believed the award was fair, and reflective of the highest price a willing buyer would pay a willing seller. The ARA had money to pay the pro tanto, a sum that was in excess of $200,000.

During the course of litigation, the attorneys for the property owners who had accepted the pro tanto and decided to sue argued that other land belonging to their relatives and having frontage on Tiffany Street should be added to the back land owned by the plaintiffs, which, according to their attorneys, would have allowed the plaintiffs and their relatives to build a residential subdivision. That theory did not seem persuasive, but the plaintiffs were permitted to argue it at trial, and it appears the jurors believed it. At trial the experts for the plaintiffs and the defendant's experts offered very different opinions of the costs of constructing the subdivision proposed by the plaintiffs. Again, the jury's verdict suggests that the jurors believed the plaintiffs' experts.

The taking took place in 2005, a time when the value of residential land was high, and economic activity was vigorous. The ARA reasonably believed in 2005 that it would be able to sell land within the Industrial Business Park once the new Commerce Way was constructed, or explore the sale of some portions of the land near existing residential subdivisions for residential purposes. By the time of the trial in August 2008, the ARA had used almost all of its financial reserves to settle an earlier eminent domain case in 2007, rather than risk a jury trial involving plaintiffs who claimed that they had lost the opportunity of building a significant number of house lots because of the taking. That case, too, had its origin in land takings that occurred in 2005.

Why did the ARA engage in a public dispute with the Attleboro Board of Assessors?

Some will recall that in 2004, the ARA board and the Attleboro Board of Assessors argued publicly about the significance of the assessment of a lot of land taken by the ARA. The ARA board members believed the Board of Assessors had increased substantially the assessment of interior, land-locked parcels within the proposed industrial business park as a way to increase present tax revenues for the city, at the risk of exposing the ARA to significantly higher money judgments. The ARA board reviewed the significant increase in the values of land-locked parcels within the IBP over the course of three years. Those increases were dramatic, and, most importantly, without basis, according to the ARA's professional appraisers. Yet, the ARA board knew that if the attorneys for the property owners were able to submit those assessed values to the jury, the jury would be persuaded that the assessed value was the true measure of the property owners' damages.

What will happen if the ARA doesn't find money with which to pay the bank and the plaintiffs' judgment?

It seems clear that at some point in the near term, without some infusion of funds, the bank will have no choice but to foreclose on its mortgages, and the IBP will be owned by a private party.

Some have said that the private party will then build the IBP. Because residential land is more valuable, it is more likely that a private party would pursue the rezoning of all or a portion of the IBP for residential purposes. As a result, the city would fail in its stated goal of the Urban Renewal Plan: the creation of additional industrial land to begin to redress the lopsided ratio of industrial/business/commercial land to residential land, which affects our property taxes.