OK this is resolved!
The problem was that in this upgraded site, the content I was pulling from the db did not have the format(mimetype) as the second list element.
template::util::richtext::get_property expects the second list element to be the format.
I wrote a utility procedure to wrap the content in. This proc adds a format if one does not exist. (just adds an empty list element)
I spoke to Don and he thinks the template::util::richtext::get_property proc is supposed to function this way. (i.e. stay the way it is)
