Santa Clarita's Paul Brotzman submits offers to Spruce Street businesses, and then promptly backs out of one of the offers.

The saga continues as the Old Town Newhall Redevelopment plans go through more false starts and wrong turns, with "back out" rapidly becoming this week’s theme song.

This week has been full of interesting moments at the City of Santa Clarita. We’ve seen the City of Santa Clarita back out of their ridiculous back-in parking plan in Old Town (Downtown) Newhall to the tune of $60,000 to fix this mess, and the continuation of the Henry Mayo hospital expansion drama, but this is only the small stuff…

Here’s the real kicker of the week: The City of Santa Clarita (in the name of Paul Brotzman, Director of Community Development) delivered "Offers to Purchase" to certain Spruce Street (Old Town Newhall) business owners on Tuesday. The offer letters, which in one case was delivered to the front porch of the property owners home, were cc’d to Chris Price, Assistant City Engineer; Joe Montes, City Attorney; and Barbara Stoll, Acquisition Specialist.

Not surprisingly, these offers were just for the land and building, and did not include any offers for relocation assistance or relocation costs as promised earlier by Brotzman and other Santa Clarita City representatives. Are they backing out of that promise, or was that just an oversight on the City’s part?

One of the property owners, Tom Fitterer, looked at the offer from the City of Santa Clarita and promptly faxed over his written acceptance, thinking it was not a bad deal. And why not? The offer for his 2,700 square foot building on a 7,436 square foot lot came in at $3,355,900! Granted this is the building at the corner of Spruce Street and Lyons Avenue and thus has great visibility, but it’s probably not worth quite that much… After all, this is the building that houses the now-famous Just Passin’ Thru tattoo and piercing parlor.

Within hours after receiving Tom’s acceptance of their offer, Santa Clarita City representatives called him to back out of the deal (sound familiar?) and then submitted a much lower offer to him at $585,000. His comment on this whole escapade was, "When you deal with Keystone Cops, what can you expect? I think this whole bunch should be recalled!"

Tom also recalls when the Old Town Newhall Redevelopment Plan was first introduced to the businesses in the area, and laughs about the way this whole redevelopment plan was presented to the public. The architect apparently declared that the Old Town Newhall area was going to become like the Madonna Inn, which didn’t even elicit a snicker from the audience. Seems nobody was aware of this fancy first-class resort located in San Luis Obispo (off Highway 101 halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles), famous for its themed rooms like the Caveman Room, Love Nest, and Barrel of Fun!

Keystone Cops seems to be the current theme at the City of Santa Clarita. Wikipedia had this to say about the Santa Clarita City Council (or was that the Keystone Cops?): "The term has come to be used to criticize any group for its mistakes, particularly if the mistakes happened after a great deal of energy and activity, or if there was a lack of coordination among the members of the group." Sounds familiar, huh?

Per Tom Fitterer, "When Keystone Cops turn into bullies, they should be spoofed!" Is anyone taking these people seriously these days? Feel free to post your comments below.

Note to the press: Yes, I do have a copy of the original offer letter to Tom Fitterer as well Tom’s as acceptance of the offer.

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