Let me see if I got this right.  9 acres of land in Anchorage were owned by a group of retired schoolteachers.  They sold that land to developers (friends of Ted Stevens) who re-zoned the land, increasing the appraised value from $1.9 m to $4.5 m.  They then got Ted to earmark funds for the Feds to buy it at the higher rate, even though the zoning issue was irrelevant to the intended use of the property.  Developers made $2.6 m in one year.  Now, Sullivan is proposing that the city buy this land  from the feds for $3 - $4 m.  And everyone is happy.  Except maybe the retired schoolteachers, who probably would have happily sold it to the city for $1.9 m.  And those of us, the taxpayers, that are footing the bill for this unbelievable money grab.

How about if we re-zone the property back to residential and buy it for the $1.9 m?  We could declare the property as suitable for use as park and wetlands only and drop the value to nothing?

This land deal is outrageous.  And we paid for it.