Vicki Cox-Golder And Bill Arnold's Last Land Deal In The Amphi School District Crashes And Burns. By Jim Nintzel THE LAND-DEALIN' political tag team of Vicki Cox-Golder and Bill Arnold has certainly fallen on hard times. First they get stomped by Democrat Sharon Bronson in the race for Pima County Supervisor Ed Moore's District 3 seat in the November election. Then, this week, at Vicki's last meeting as president of the Amphi School Board, they get shot down by an angry squadron of soccer moms and bush pilots. Cox-Golder's fellow board members voted on Tuesday, December 10, to cancel the purchase of 39 acres next to La Cholla Airpark for a junior high school. Acting under his exclusive retainer agreement with Amphi, Arnold brokered the deal for the land, which is--surprise!--partially owned by Charles Townsdin, a real estate lawyer who has worked for Cox-Golder off and on for the last 20 years. Townsdin was the single largest contributor to Cox-Golder's campaign for the Pima County Board of Supervisors. Although the district had entered into escrow on the property last July, they kept the public in the dark about the deal until the details leaked out less than two weeks ago. The word spread fast. In the space of a week, the purchase was condemned by the Pima County Board of Supervisors, the Oro Valley Planning and Zoning Department and an FAA safety official. Once the story broke in The Weekly and on the television stations, angry parents aligned themselves with airpark residents and Amphi Board members began to ...feel the heat. Cox-Golder was the first one overboard, announcing she had a conflict of interest and couldn't vote on the buy--a decision she made after being confronted by formerly friendly news crews about the links between her campaign contributions and the property owners. After announcing she'd sit the vote out, Cox-Golder told Tucson Citizen reporter Larry Copenhaver that she would have voted against the deal--a statement Copenhaver reported with a straight face. "I would never do anything that would jeopardize the safety of children," she told Copenhaver. Only one question, Vicki: If you were voting against purchasing property from your business associate, why would you have a conflict of interest? The next board member to bail was Richard Scott, who was too ill to attend Tuesday's meeting. Perhaps he was suffering from a bout of airsickness brought on by the turbulence. With whispers of recall in the air, the remaining board members slipped behind closed doors on Tuesday afternoon to discuss the land purchase in executive session. When they emerged to face a hostile crowd of parents and pilots, they had already scripted a motion to cancel the sale. After hearing from about a dozen pissed-off citizens, they passed the motion 3-0. BACK WHEN SHE was wafflin' down the campaign trail, we found Cox-Golder to be extraordinarily disingenuous. But after watching her tell the Citizen she was suddenly opposed to a land deal her right-hand man had been brokering for the last six months, we'd have to say she's an out-and-out liar. Let's take a closer look at the deal: Charles Townsdin was a staunch supporter of Cox-Golder. He and his wife Sandra contributed a total of $750 to her failed bid for county office. Nobody is saying a mere $750 bought Cox-Golder's support on the $665,000 land deal--that would be a ludicrous claim. We simply point it out to demonstrate Cox-Golder and Townsdin are close--as Cox-Golder herself admitted to KVOA-TV reporter Tony Paniagua: "I've known Chuck Townsdin for well over 20 years," Vicki told Paniagua. "He's been my personal counsel for a bunch of that time. I did not even know he was the seller of the this property 'til last week." Such a small world. But then, Cox-Golder also told Paniagua, "Typically, the board does not know, number one, who the sellers are of a piece of property, even when we close it." Yeah, right. It's odd that a woman like Cox-Golder, who has never passed up an opportunity to boast about her leadership in the real estate community in northwestern Pima County, is suddenly so ignorant when it comes to spending millions of dollars of taxpayer money. But, as she explained on a radio program last September: "I'm not involved in that part of the activities at all. I deal in real estate all day long. I don't want to have to deal with it after-hours, as well." We doubt Cox-Golder is telling the truth. But even if she didn't know the Townsdin family had an interest in the property, surely Bill Arnold did. ARNOLD, WHO LIKES to call himself "The Land Man," is a close political ally of Cox-Golder. A broker with Genesis Real Estate and Development, he chaired her recent campaign for the county Board of Supervisors. He's also represented Amphi in land acquisition deals since 1992. Initially hired by Amphi Associate Superintendent Katie Frey to handle an "emergency procurement," Arnold continued to represent Amphi after placing the lone "bid" for this unadvertised position in 1993. Just as Cox-Golder has a curious ignorance about land transactions, Frey has a foggy memory--she has told The Weekly she couldn't remember who recommended Arnold for the job. Arnold was the mastermind behind the 1994 decision to purchase two large lots for more than $22,000 an acre while surrounding lots were selling for around $16,000. As it turned out, those parcels--for which the district paid more than $2.5 million--were both owned by real estate brokers or their families. (Arnold earned nearly $100,000 in commissions for those deals.) Just last summer, when Arnold and Frey bought eight acres and a big building on Desert Sky Road for $1 million, they earned high praise from the Amphi Board. (Arnold also earned a $30,000 commission.) "Dr. Frey and her team, and Bill Arnold of Genesis Realty, were commended for their expertise in acquiring the property," according to Board minutes. Of course, now the Board has discovered the Desert Sky building will need about three-quarters-of-a-million dollars to bring it up to snuff, so Amphi is currently considering selling the property. Whoops! Well, what's a million bucks in bond money tied up in a little dirt? Amphi's decision to withdraw from this latest deal near the airpark may actually pay off for Arnold. In the original purchase agreement, Arnold would have earned a 3.5 percent commission on the deal, or $23,275. But a provision in his "Exclusive Retainer Agreement" specifies: "In the event of a default on the part of The District a Brokerage fee equal to 5 percent of the estimated acquisition cost of the site shall be payable to Genesis." In this case, 5 percent of $665,000 is $33,250. We'll let you know if Arnold sends in an invoice. MANY OF THE speakers at Tuesday night's board meeting expressed their disgust with the way the district kept them in the dark about the property, even though it had been in escrow since July. They couldn't understand why a public body would keep a purchase like this a secret from taxpayers. Well, join the club. When The Weekly first began looking into Arnold's work for the district, Amphi officials stonewalled numerous requests for public records. Only after The Weekly threatened to sue the district were documents as basic as purchase contracts turned over to reporters. Some of that paperwork had to be retrieved from Genesis Real Estate because Katie Frey had apparently never bothered to file it at Amphi. Even after that run-around, no one at Amphi saw fit to mention the pending purchase near the airpark, even though district officials had entered into escrow on the property more than a month before we began our investigation. Perhaps Amphi officials just don't consider the checks they write to be public record. Reporters weren't the only ones deceived by the district. Airpark resident Chris Peña says the only attempt to inform the community of the land purchase occurred at a meeting in July, when Amphi officials told an airpark representative they wanted to place a bus barn or a school on a nearby site. "There is no doubt in my mind that we've been sandbagged," Peña said before the meeting. "They entered escrow and failed to disclose that fact." Obviously, Amphi planned to buy the land and find a use for it later. And they didn't want anyone to know what they were doing while Cox-Golder was running for the Board of Supervisors. If this scheme had been exposed, Vicki probably would have finished behind Ed Moore. With her term on the Amphi Board at its end, Cox-Golder has already announced her plans to run for the state House of Representatives in heavily Republican District 12. Imagine the favors she'll be able to do for her friends while she's in the Legislature. Arnold, too, is moving on: He's landed a spot on a recently formed Bond Oversight Committee for Pima Community College. No doubt all this work he's done for Amphi will help him provide "leadership" when it comes time to buy a site for the new northwest campus Pima plans to build. We'll be watching.

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