Land sale approved

Jeffrey Libby

Wednesday, May 23, 2001 | 10:06 a.m.

Sometimes the third time is a charm.

On Tuesday that meant the Boulder City Council was able to unanimously approve the sale of a one-third-acre parcel to landowners Roger Dieleman and Violet Tracht.

The small right-of-way will allow Dieleman and Tracht to connect a planned 48-lot subdivision to a residential road rather than a major highway.

The council originally proposed to sell a 0.997-acre parcel to the developers along with the right-of-way. It would have allowed them to build a 51-lot subdivision overlooking Lake Mead. But Councilman Bill Smith said the sale, cut from a two-acre parcel, circumvented a slow-growth ordinance that requires voters to approve any sale of city-owned land greater than an acre.

After the council abandoned that idea, calling it "too politicized," a short-handed council voted two weeks ago to table an agreement that would have sold just the right-of-way to the developers for $43,000. Councilman Bryan Nix said at the last minute that the city should give the land to them at no cost since the city had landlocked the private land when it built Quartzite Road.

But this week, on the third try, the right-of-way was conveyed smoothly, with only one hitch: Councilmen want a current appraisal. The appraisal that pegged the land at $43,000 was done about a year ago.