At last night’s special meeting council formally accepted Ace Demolition’s $ 29,317.69 bid for demolishing the decrepit, substandard Old Church Building (OCB) that sits on the City Hall property.
The vote was 5-2, with Councilman Ed Hargate and Councilman Frank Legan voting no.
The contract is in line with the structural engineer’s estimate for razing the building and is within the amount budgeted for that purpose in the city’s “401” capital improvements fund.
Apparently Mayor Coleman did not handle the vote with much grace. I heard from a source that following the vote. the mayor declared, off-microphone, that he would not sign the demolition contract.
Of course, the mayor is legally obligated to execute all council-approved contracts—even ones he doesn’t like. He can’t veto contracts or pick and choose which contracts to sign.
I’d dismiss the tip as mere rumor except for the fact that Mayor Coleman withheld his signature from another OCB-related contract earlier this year. Readers of this blog will recall that Mayor Coleman kept a contract for a needed asbestos study sitting on his desk, unsigned, for nearly a month (until council got wind of the situation)---which according to Steve Hovanscek prevented the City Engineer’s Office from getting the demolition bid specs to council before it adjourned for its annual August recess.
It is extremely disappointing to think that any mayor would openly declare their intention to flout their legal duties and responsibilities simply because they disagreed with a council decision.
Taxpayers have high expectations for their mayors---they expect them to act like chief executives, not four year olds...
I Ain’t Never Gonna Give Up.. Mayor Coleman and the Club Molisani “Partnership”
Before the vote, Mayor Coleman made a last-ditch attempt to keep council from approving the demolition contract. Citing a legal memo issued by Law Director Tim Paluf last week, Mayor Coleman asked for a delay, so he could meet with Club Molisani to see if they were still interested in trying to work out a deal for renovating the OCB.
The memo, however, apparently simply recapped what Paluf told council during a July 20th council committee meeting --- namely that the city could accept a donation of work and materials, but it couldn’t enter into the proposed “quid pro quo” “partnership” with the club.
The reality is this: Mayor Coleman knew as of July 20th that the city couldn’t accept the club’s “partnership” proposal. He had plenty of time after that to speak with the club, and he could have invited club representatives to come to last night’s committee meeting if he truly thought it would be fruitful to engage in further dialogue with them. But the mayor didn’t choose to do that.
Which leads to one conclusion: his request had nothing to do with working out a deal with the club and everything to do with stalling and delaying the vote on the demolition contract.
I have to say that I feel badly for Club Molisani. They offered their proposal in good faith. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the administration withheld the 2008 structural engineer’s report from the club when they were formulating their “partnership” proposal for presentation at the June 1st council committee meeting. It appears that the club then got painted in a corner by Mayor Coleman’s repeated public pronouncements (repeated again last night) that the club had agreed to pick up the whole tab for completely renovating and bringing the OCB up to current building standards. That is simply not the case.
Read the minutes from the June 1st meeting yourself. http://www.highlandhts.com/docs/city_council/committee%20minutes/2010/06-01-10_council_committee_minutes.htm
What the club offered to do was to “restore the church part of the facility to build two (later 3) bocce courts” and to “be responsible, long term, for the roofing, plumbing, sewer, cement, furnace and AC” (if they had seen the engineer’s report, the club would have known that the OCB lacks air conditioning). The club also said that they would be “willing to undertake other restoration projects” over the “long term,” that they wanted “sole use of the bocce courts at night,” that they were “ thinking (in terms of) a ten year lease,” and they didn’t “want to pay rental again” for indoor bocce courts, as it had been doing elsewhere in the past.
As I have said before, what the club actually promised is much less than what Mayor Coleman claimed---and continued to claim last night.
Impossible Things Are Happening Every Day...
Councilman Frank Legan returned to his usual themes in speaking out against demolishing the OCB—and added a new claim as well.
Legan continued to assert that although council has spent the last 2 ½ years discussing what to do with the OCB, it was “being hasty,” it was making a decision “too quickly,” there “hadn’t been enough dialogue,” and that council shouldn’t act because it “still hadn’t come to a consensus on the ideal use for the building”---a consensus that in Legan’s mind could never include demolishing the building and creating a green public gathering space.
Councilman Legan also claimed---as he has done in the past—that once council settled on a need for the building, the city would be able to obtain awards and grants to pay for renovating it. The funny thing is, as long as he’s been saying it, Legan has never identified any financial sources for such alleged awards and grants, nor has he done any leg work to actually submit a grant application on the city’s behalf.
As a new twist, Frank Legan also argued that residents wouldn’t have to pay the operating costs, if the OCB was renovated and used as a senior or recreation center---He claimed,“It could be self sustaining.” Does he mean like the Community Center---which taxpayers already subsidize to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars each year?
Gosh, if we’re going to engage in wishful thinking along with Councilman Legan, why stop with grants and awards and self-sustaining fees? Why shouldn't we believe that maybe if council votes to renovate the OCB, the Tooth Fairy won't come down and leave 25 bucks for each of us, under our pillows? Wouldn’t that be neat?
I Won’t Tell You Why I Did What I Did, I’ll Just Tell You What I Don’t Want To Do...
Councilman Ed Hargate doesn’t seem to like to stick his neck out or go on the record. He doesn't talk much at council meetings, and the last time he voted no on a council resolution (against the recommendation of Law Director Tim Paluf), he did so without explaining his decision.
His logic has been extremely hard to follow given the brevity of his statements, but Hargate’s primary reason for opposing demolishing the OCB seems to be that he thinks it will be a waste of money if, after buying the church property, the city ends up with only a green space. “That’s not why I bought the property,” he said.
Ed Hargate has never explained why he wanted to buy the property in the first place. The OCB was already in very bad shape--with mold, a leaking roof and an inoperable heating system---when the city bought the property in January 2008. The 2007 council minutes do not indicate that council had any plans for using the OCB. Mayor Coleman, in fact, has acknowledged that he wanted the property for the city, not the building.
Sworn deposition testimony given in the Bass Energy lawsuit indicates that the city did not buy the church property with the intention of renovating and using the OCB. Rather, the city needed the property in order to drill a gas well near city hall---as Mayor Coleman planned to do. In fact, council eventually authorized the mayor to enter into two separate drilling leases with Bass Energy--one for the Community Park and one for the City Hall property. Bill Hlavin, the President and Owner of Bass Energy, testified:
"They (the city) had two properties, the city hall property and the city park property, and we talked about..we proposed, the number of wells on each property ... There was no question that there was room for ...one well on the city hall complex.... they were going to have to add on, to comply with state laws, the chruch property to the west side of their driveway which if they---they thought there was a chance that they could acquire that property and if they did acquire it, then we would use that...it would then given them an ideal location to put a well just the the south of the city hall complex." Hlavin Deposition, Sept. 26, 2008, pps. 45-46.
So there you have it. Apparently the city bought the church property in order to drill a gas well near City Hall. Now that the drilling deal has fallen through,Councilman Hargate is opposed to razing the OCB because he thinks it would be a waste of money to use the property as a public green space and community gathering place.
I don't know. You tell me...
In my next blog, I’ll let you know what the supporters of the demolition contract said, to justify their decision.
