Boondoggle.

Good reporting Dirk! Looking forward to the follow up.

Either funds were actually secured with a binding written agreement with the sponsor back in November or Alta is improperly billing the City for work not completed.

Regardless of which scenario is the truth, the messaging on these issues has been horrendous.

I'm guessing the financial plan had a line for "$5.5 million bridge loan from City" as they have mentioned multiple times. And then the bike company went bankrupt in January, no doubt rendering a major part or parts of the plan obsolete. Probably needs to be greatly retooled at this point. If I had to guess.

This program was never supposed to be publicly funded. If it is, the tune of $5.5 or $7 million or whatever, we should get a vote on it.

Oh yeah: BIKES!

Thanks for your reporting, Dirk. We can be bike-positive and still require honesty from Alta and PBOT.

I figure that if Alta and PBOT can't respond to the Mercury in ten seconds with the name- then there is no sponsor.

How dishonest does a vendor have to be before the City refuses to do business with that vendor?

If there is a secured sponsorship with a signed contract, PBOT / Alta do not need to disclose the name of the sponsor right now. The sponsorship is effectively a paid advertisement and they should naturally coordinate the announcement of the named sponsor to maxim value.

But, to satisfy some of these questions and apparent discrepancies. PBOT / Alta can announce the fact that there is a signed contract and the date it was signed. Or they can produce a redacted contract blocking out the sponsor's name.

I dunno .. if I signed up as a sponsor I might stipulate that no announcement get made until launch was a much more certain thing - lest the delay/failure have my name all over it. Maybe.

This is a great catch and a pretty important question. Looking forward to PBOT's response.