Tusayan Pays Thousands To Learn About Housing In Colorado: Consultant's Report Fails To Include Arizona
December 23, 2012
The consultant that Tusayan Mayor Greg Bryan promoted to the town seems to have forgotten the client is in Arizona. The consultant did manage to collect a tidy sum for its sparse efforts.
The International Housing Solutions report to the Tusayan Council was supposed to give the council some ideas as to set up a housing authority. So you would think the council would get some examples of similar entities in Arizona.
That didn’t happen. Instead the council got a summary of how things are done in Colorado. Why Colorado? That’s where International Housing Solutions is based. Basically IHS just copied the paperwork from the three Colorado entities, wrote a short summary and sent it to the council.
International housing Solutions was paid $10,000 for this work. They were required to provide three examples of housing authorities, and the town of Tusayan assumed that the consultants would bother to go beyond their back door. They didn’t.
Mayor Bryan, who had spoken highly of the consultant stated at the December 19th council meeting, “I would encourage that we add on to their expectations of International Housing Solutions is that they find us housing authorities with similar kinds of problems in the state of Arizona.”
Town Manager Tammi Ryall said that would require a change in their scope of work. She did not recommend doing that.
Mayor Bryan then suggested the Town develop a questionnaire and send it to all of the incorporated communities in Arizona to see how they deal with housing authorities. It’s safe to say that effort will not cost the taxpayers of Tusayan $10,000
Readers of this publication remember that we noted the consultant’s inexperience and the high cost of the work. Here is a portion of an article that appeared in April:
“On April 25th, the Council has decided to give Scott Brown and John Young more than $17,000 to look at affordable housing in Tusayan. The company has no actual experience in this field. One is a realtor, the other a builder. In fact, Young is also running for political office according to Colorado media reports.
Neither Brown nor Young have a degree in planning, or zoning or design. Brown finished junior college, Young has a degree in marketing and in public relations. The company Brown and Young formed is brand new; and Tusayan trusts it with a very critical decision. In fact when the council voted, Mayor Greg Bryan cheered.”