The backroom deal I warned about last year is now playing out in broad daylight.

In February 2024, I asked whether Lakewood was eyeing a bargain on the closed Emory Elementary — a deal that could dodge public input and leave Jeffco taxpayers holding the bag.

Fifteen months later, the answer is a resounding yes.

On Monday, Lakewood’s City Council authorized a $4 million below-market purchase of the school — a site that got $2.6 million in taxpayer-funded upgrades before Jeffco closed it in 2023. It’s now on track to become the new home of the nonprofit Action Center — courtesy of a taxpayer-funded workaround.

The Action Center’s mission may be noble, serving vulnerable families and individuals. But the process? Not so much. It reeks of an almost theatrical disregard for transparency and taxpayer interests — with a straight face.

In January 2024, Jeffco Schools quietly introduced a new “Municipal Interest” process giving municipalities like Lakewood first dibs on shuttered schools — without competitive bidding or public input. COO Jeff Gatlin confirmed Lakewood’s “interest in the Emory property,” revealing they were already “working through the municipal interest route.”

Translation? A backdoor sale — letting Jeffco Schools unload taxpayer-funded property at a loss. A consultant even advised this process empowered the district to skip community feedback entirely.

At the time, Lakewood city spokesperson Stacie Oulton, in an email, told me they had no “direct interest” in buying Emory — just “a larger conversation” with Jeffco and the Action Center, which was eyeing the site as the new home.

But behind the scenes, the plan was in motion: Jeffco created the workaround, and Lakewood is playing the municipal middleman — while the Action Center waits in the wings. The public wasn’t clued in until just before Monday’s vote.

Officials could barely curb their enthusiasm. Development chief Travis Parker bragged about snagging Emory for “significantly under the market rate.” City Manager Kathy Hodgson boasted the “appraised price was much, much higher.” (No appraisal value was given.)

Here’s how the scheme works: The Action Center isn’t a municipality and can’t use the “municipal interest” loophole to dodge open competition. So, Lakewood leapfrogs public bidding, scores a bargain, then flips the property to the nonprofit — which would otherwise have to pay market rates or risk losing to private developers who might build housing or preserve open space.

Meanwhile, Jeffco Schools faces a $38 million deficit and contemplates asking voters for more money.

Lakewood now has a year to finalize the deal with “another organization” — namely, the Action Center — or must give the property back for public bidding. The city’s own memo lays it out: the goal is a “contract for sale of real property to the Action Center.”

Curiously, city hall approved two school land purchases. For Vivian Elementary — a 2-acre site — they used public bidding. For Emory — a sprawling 17 acres with 10 earmarked for the Action Center — they took the backdoor.

Why the double standard? Why should Jeffco taxpayers eat a loss so one nonprofit can cash in through a taxpayer-funded workaround?

“While I understand Jeffco Schools wants to be good partners with other municipalities, these relationships should not be at the expense of their primary duty to Jeffco Schools,” former board member Susan Miller told me, citing the district’s “fiduciary duty of care to ensure the financial solvency” to “provide an education in quality facilities.”

But Jeffco has rejected other options — like selling to developers for new housing or leasing to charter schools that need more space.

“Both the sale of Emory to the City of Lakewood ‘well below market value’ and taking $22 million (so far) out of Jeffco classrooms to gift an aquatics facility to the City of Arvada arguably violates the directors’ fiduciary duty of care to the children and voters of Jefferson County,” Miller said.

No wonder this has been under-the-table until now. Even more, Lakewood’s City Council held at least two closed-door executive sessions on the matter.

“This has been noticed, and this is compliant with open meetings laws,” a city official advised the council Monday.

But attorney and former Lakewood Councilor Anita Springsteen filed an emergency injunction Monday challenging the secrecy, arguing the city council violated Colorado open meetings laws by failing to provide the legally required details. Her filing follows two lawsuits over improper executive sessions last September, both tied to the Emory deal.

“It’s essentially ‘fruit of the poisonous tree’ because it started with a violation of the people’s rights,” Springsteen told me. “The city knows they’re required to announce the particular matter to be discussed in as much detail as possible. Instead, they simply stated they were receiving advice on ‘negotiations’ — no topic, no address, nothing that would alert the public to what was really happening.”

Law or not, the intent is clear: Lakewood kept the public in the dark — and Jeffco made it possible.

Now residents are bracing for what they believe is a “homeless navigation center” in their neighborhood — a claim Oulton strenuously dismissed in an email as “the very definition of disinformation.” Perhaps the sudden backlash wouldn’t be so fierce if Lakewood and Jeffco had been honest and transparent from the start. But that was never part of the plan.

Jimmy Sengenberger is an investigative journalist, public speaker, and longtime local talk-radio host. Reach Jimmy online at Jimmysengenberger.com or on X (formerly Twitter) @SengCenter.