How much have Las Vegas city fathers and mothers given away to golf course developer Bill Walters over the past decade on just the 160-acre Royal Links golf course parcel? Perhaps as much as $80 million when it’s all said and done. More on how we arrived at that figure in a moment.

First, let us invite your kind attention to today’s Review-Journal, where City Hall reporter David McGrath Schwartz discovered the city’s environmental officer, Lori Wohletz, is sick and tired of the city giving Walters special treatment.

What special treatment, you ask? Well, if you haven’t been following along, let’s bring you up to speed:

• Former city Public Works Director Richard Goecke reportedly gave Walters a copy of a soil sample report before he bid to build a course on the land Vegas Valley Drive and Desert Inn Road, adjacent to the city’s sewage treatment plant. (No other bidder got this favor.) When city officials discovered that fact, they simply put the course out to bid again. Goecke was not punished.

• Walters built on an additional 29 acres that wasn’t included in the original bid. When city officials discovered that fact, they simply amended the lease agreement, rather than sue Walters for trespass. Goecke allegedly approved the construction.

• In 1999, the city sold Walters the land under the course for $854,000, far less than its value. (A deed restriction stipulated the land would be used only for a golf course, thus limiting the land’s value.)

• Early this year, Walters asked the city to lift the deed restriction, in exchange for $7.2 million, a fraction of the land’s present value. The city agreed, even after an environmental report on the subject was altered, prompting a police investigation.

• The city, by the way, is on the hook for at least $5 million to control odors from plant, and complaints are likely to increase as homes are built within 20 feet of the plant’s border. (Yes, yes, we know: Walters thinks his shit don’t stink. Good one.)

• The council is meeting as this is posted to reconsider its decision lifting the deed restriction, since Councilman Steve Wolfson was irked that he didn’t know all of the above when he and five colleagues voted to give Walters a huge gift of public funds. (Only Councilwoman Lois Tarkanian voted no, because she thought $7.2 million was too low an offer.)

OK, you’re up to speed. But wait until you read Wohletz’s blockbuster allegations from Schwartz’s story today.

• Blockbuster Allegation No. 1: Allowing Walters to build homes on the golf course land — which was originally intended to serve as a buffer between homes and the sewage treatment plant — will cause the city in incur costs of about $30 million in upgrades to the plant.

“To jeopardize that facility’s compliance to make one person richer, who’s already rich, makes no sense to me,” Wohletz told the R-J. “There’s no benefit to the city and there’s a large potential to harm the wastewater treatment plant.”

• Blockbuster Allegation No. 2: An independent report recommended against building homes on the land, and, in fact, buying more nearly land to increase the buffer between the plant and residences. This was the staff’s recommendation to City Manager Doug Selby, who demurred to the City Council.

Well, not so much demurred as heartily recommended the deal, a stance Selby says he now regrets, but also doesn’t regret, since the city is getting money from Walters. (What the hell is going on with this guy?)

• Blockbuster Allegation No. 3: Wohletz accused Selby in an e-mail to Mayor Pro Tem Gary Reese of manipulating an independent study of the proposal by slanting questions so as to get positive answers. The questions were so slanted, she says, that the consultant doing the study asked if the Walters plan was a “done deal.”

Selby says in the R-J story that “no draft [of the report] was edited or reviewed.” But he knows that’s not true: One version highlighted plenty of problems with developing homes on the land, and a second version — with those concerns toned down — was circulated as well. It was the dual reports that prompted Mayor Oscar Goodman to call for a Metro Police investigation, which found no criminal wrongdoing with the dueling documents.

Wohletz, who says city staffers have been “expressing outrage” over Walters’ sweetheart deals for years, told Reese in her e-mail she’s prepared to quit over her concerns. “I am fully prepared to resign immediately if necessary. My last boss, Michael Naylor, once told me that if my ethics were bothering me then it was time to find another job. I always thought that was some of the best advice that I was ever given.”

Thank God that ethics aren’t totally dead at City Hall. But Wohletz remarks raise another important question:

Why the hell isn’t it the City Council asking these questions? Why isn’t it the City Council — with the exception of Tarkanian — outraged about the taxpayers being taken for a ride, about their assets being sold to benefit Walters, a prime contributor to local campaigns? Why is it that at least two City Councils have — what’s that phrase — bent all the way over for Walters from 1997 to the present day? And why do we taxpayers continually re-elect these people when they’re letting a campaign contributor rob us blind?

And that brings us back to Walters, The Up-To-$80-Million-Man. “This thing has been studied every which way they can study it. Nothing has changed except for misinformation and innuendo,” Walters told the R-J.

Well, it hasn’t been studied every way there, Bill. Let’s do the Various Things & Stuff Total Taxpayer Screwing Analysis, shall we? The subtotals are cumulative, so watch the numbers really take off.

• The city bought the land near the sewage treatment plant for $2.65 million between 1987 and 1990. It sold the land to Walters — admittedly with a value-limiting deed restriction — for $854,000 in 1999.

Taxpayer Screwing Subtotal: $1,796,000.

• The city accepted Walters offer of $7.2 million to lift the deed restriction just this month, despite two appraisals that showed the land was worth between $35.6 million and $55.7 million.

Taxpayer Screwing Subtotal: Between $30,196,000 and $50,296,000.

• The city will likely have to pay $5 million right away for odor control to accommodate the new homes.

Taxpayer Screwing Subtotal: Between $35,196,000 and $55,296,000.

• And, according to Wohletz, the city may have to pay an additional $30 million for odor control over the long term, because of nearby homes.

Taxpayer Screwing Grand Total: Between $60,196,000 and $80,296,000.

Now that’s outrageous, especially because it’s simply unnecessary. Consider this final thought:

Forget for a moment the sneaky way Walters got the golf course lease in the first place, Goecke’s alleged illegal acts and all the covering up that was done by the council in 1998 (when former Mayor Jan Jones was in office, by the way). This land was intended to serve as a buffer between homes and the sewage treatment plant, not another subdivision. Allowing homes nearby makes no sense from a policy perspective, and incurs extra costs for taxpayers. From a financial standpoint, it makes no sense, unless Walters agrees to pay full price for the land and for every upgrade necessary to the sewage treatment plant to deal with all future odor complaints from his planned Sweetheart Heights development.

What are the odds that he’ll agree to that?

What are the odds that the council would even ask for that?

Probably about the same as landing a hole-in-one on one of Walters long, ill-gotten par-4s.