The city of Aspen admits it could have used a better word in an advertisement taken out in local papers defending the Burlingame affordable housing project.

The ad in question, which ran in both newspapers recently, states that the city has built 84 housing units and a road, has installed utilities to the site and is “constructing” seven single-family homes, all for $58.5 million, the total spent on Burlingame to date.

The only problem with the ad is that six of the seven single-family-home lots have been sold to local residents who are building the homes at their own expense. The ad seeks to debunk a local rumor that Burlingame is a “half-billion-dollar mistake,” although the origins of that rumor are in dispute. The ad also encourages citizens to attend open house meetings concerning Burlingame that will be held on July 29 at City Hall.

City spokeswoman Sally Spaulding, who wrote the ad, said the intent of the statement about the single-family lots was to communicate that the community will gain seven homes and 84 apartments from $58.5 million in taxpayer monies. Spaulding noted that the city has spent money grading the sites and running utilities to the sites.

“That’s what we’re paying and that’s what we’re getting,” Spaulding said. Still, “I should have used a better word. I should have known that as a (former) reporter,” said Spaulding, who used to work at the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.

The city is taking out ads in both local papers in the run-up to the July 29 meeting. The ads in the Daily News are running for a fee of $198 per day.

Spaulding said she is changing the wording of the ad for future runs.

The controversy over Burlingame erupted in May when a citizen unearthed a 2005 brochure distributed shortly before a vote to authorize the project reporting Burlingame’s total cost as $74 million, with a per-unit subsidy of $62,000. Those figures did not include infrastructure, land costs, soft costs and other costs known to the city at the time. Now, after council-authorized changes to the project, the expected total cost is $138 million with an $85 million subsidy, a subsidy five to six times higher than what was stated in the erroneous brochure.

City Manager Steve Barwick conceded that, in light of the nature of the Burlingame controversy, the city needs to be extra careful with the information it communicates to the public. However, Barwick did not check the language of the ad in question before it went out to local papers, he said, “because I have a million and one things to do right now.”

Any controversy related to the advertisement is frustrating to Barwick, who said the subject of Burlingame has led the city into an entirely new level of civic discourse.

“Let’s not focus on the minutia of the ad, ... let’s focus on what’s really at issue here,” Barwick said.

Spaulding said a few other pairs of eyes looked over the ad and did not notice anything amiss. She also said the city is developing policies for vetting voter information materials more thoroughly, a category in which she does not include the ad.

Spaulding said her greatest fear in her job is to “create another brochure,” referring to the source of the Burlingame controversy. And she knows the public’s awareness is heightened.

“I think everything we do at this point will be received with a new level of scrutiny, perhaps more than the city has ever seen before,” Spaulding said. “If we’re at that level, we’ll do our best to step up to that level.”

CORRECTION: The original version of this story contained two errors that have been corrected here online. First, the $58.5 million the city has spent on Burlingame so far does not include construction subsidies to the single-family-lot owners. Second, the statement is incorrectly attributed to city spokeswoman Sally Spaulding, who never represented that the $58.5 million included the construction subsidies. While the city of Aspen is working out an agreement with the single-family-lot owners that will result in the payout of $1.3 million to the lot owners to subsidize their construction costs, that figure is not included in the $58.5 million.