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| Last August Councilman Kent Solt (left), favored enforcing the vNet agreement, opposed by (right), who argued the city owes vNet an "Olive Branch." |
| The Agreement - By The Numbers Promised number of jobs by 2012..................................250 Less 15% not required to be in Loveland (per agreement)...........37 Less the people already working for company.......................78 Actual total of new jobs in Loveland required by agreement.......134 Penalty for default - $2,000 per employee Total liability.............................................$500,000 Amount Not Recoverable by Loveland in the event of default..$400,000 |
| Welcome to the LovelandPolitics vNet Index Page inception in January of 2008 when McWhinney Enterprise's Rocky Scott first proposed to the Loveland City Council during an annual retreat meeting at Group Publishing his brainchild to subsidize companies in Loveland to bring jobs. Days after the retreat, council members who were friends with vNet LLC owner Bill Beierwaltes orchestrated a letter by Beierwaltes to the City of Loveland on January 15, 2008 requesting $890,000 to move some employees out of downtown Loveland and into a larger facility that required lease-holder improvements. The Loveland Reporter-Herald cycled in and out various reporters over the course of the past three years on this story who relied almost entirely from information provided by city staff to report the context and background for the subsidy This resulted in numerous contradictory stories along with factual errors and even a scathing editorial by the Reporter Herald attacking Councilmen Cecil Gutierrez and Kent Solt for not supporting the plan in the beginning. Only LovelandPolitics provided readers the actual agreement, the behind-the-scene personal maneuvering by people like former Councilman Walt Skowron (both friend and neighbor to Beierwaltes) and other relevant facts to explain how the City of Loveland was allowed to enter into such a poorly constructed agreement that allow Beierwaltes to receive $400,000 even if didn't ever perform his obligations under the agreement. Below is a chronologically arranged index of those in depth stories, a link to the actual agreement Beiewaltes signed with the city for your review and a summary table showing the highlights of the agreement. |
| vNet Stories Index |
| should his company fail to meet the conditions negotiated in a subsidy agreement giving his privately held company $900,000 in taxpayer dollars in exchange for bringing 134 jobs to Loveland by 2012. By the end of the year Beierwaltes laid-off the majority of his employees and later sold all the assets of the company to another entity while claiming he didn't violate the agreement since he only sold the assets of vNet and not the legal corporate entity which is now an empty shell company he still owns. Apparently, Loveland City Attorney John Duval failed to anticipate such a move therefore the city's agreement with Beierwaltes only contemplates a sale of the company but not the assets. |