Business View Magazine | August 2020

236 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE AUGUST 2020 WE’RE A DEDICATED OFF-THE ROAD MOBILITY SOLUTIONS PROVIDER Camso, now part of Michelin Group, is a world leader in the design, manufacturing, and distribution of off-road tires, wheels, tracks and systems to serve the material handling, construction, agricultural and powersports industries. camso.co growth. It was informed by the U.S. government that the Big Red One would be returning to Fort Riley in order to reformulate its headquarters on familiar ground, after a year’s stationing in Germany. “The community was told, ‘You’ve got to build housing, because this town will grow from 18,000 to probably 40-50,000,’” Dinkel recounts. “So, the City brought in a lot of developers to try and develop the area.” Preparing for the good times ahead, a lot of borrowing, speculation, and planning took place. It was estimated that $600 million in new construction was imminent, with thousands of single and multifamily housing ready to be built to support the return of 4,500 soldiers and their families. The City had created special benefit financing districts and borrowed heavily to finance the necessary infrastructure improvements to support the expected growth. It meant to get repaid for those expenses, over time, from the special assessments it would levy on the property owners, i.e. the developers, who would then pass some of those costs onto their new tenants. If all things worked out, the City would be able to repay its loans expeditiously. But things went awry. The Great Recession of 2008 struck, with a particular deadly blow to the housing sector, and the Army changed its plans for Fort Riley. “All the developers, basically, defaulted,” Dinkel continues. “And the City didn’t have any financial insurance against them and went into debt to about $125 million, which, for a city this size, is about five or six times more than it should be. The population didn’t happen; the growth didn’t happen. But the debt stayed there.” Since that time, the City has had to focus on how to pay that debt off. But while doing so, it doesn’t seek to cast blame on the past. “Probably everybody made mistakes,” Dinkel admits, “from the military to the government, to the City. It’s easy to look back at the city management then and ask what could they have done differently. Everybody was anticipating making lots of money and growing the community. They saw it as their shot to get to 50,000. It didn’t happen. But it really didn’t take long for the people to try and City Hall