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The following is a guest column that Mayor Ed Martin has submitted to various news outlets. The column is in response to attorney Burton Wiand's letter of November 6, which, among other things, falsely accused the city of making a disingenuous offer to buy the Venice Jet Center.
Before you read Hizzoner's column below, it would be helpful for you to know (you will not believe this at first, but it is true) (and I'm going to shout it for the idiots at the printed papers who seem to have taken some serious hallucinogens) the following:
THE CITY NEVER, EVER, EVER OFFERED TO BUY THE VENICE JET CENTER. IT DIDN'T HAPPEN. THE NEWSPAPERS ARE LYING TO YOU WHEN THEY SAY THE CITY DID MAKE AN OFFER OR THAT THE CITY DID TRY TO BUY THE JET CENTER.
I challenge anyone in the print media to come up with ANY document that is anything more than a general inquiry about the possibility of buying the Jet Center, those inquiries based on an amatuerish offer posed by Jet Center manager Roger Jernigan in what appears to be a desperate attempt to save his job by trying to get an owner that would be dumb enough to keep him on.
OK? Comprendé, amigo?
The rest of this text, below, is the mayor's column (edited slightly by me for style and a couple of punctuation errors). I wrote the headline, so blame me for that.
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Hizzoner to Wiand: Thank you for adding more bulls**t to the pile
a column by Mayor Ed Martin, 11/07/09
The city council has never made an offer of any kind to purchase the Jet Center. No vote to do so has even been presented. Citizens proposed the idea and at least one council member expressed interest. No majority sentiment has ever been tested.
Roger Jernigan of the Jet Center called City Manager Isaac Turner and told him that the receiver would entertain an offer that provided $1.9 million to pay off a bank loan on the current facility, plus $1 million to compensate people allegedly cheated by Arthur Nadel.
The city did not entertain this offer, responding to Mr. Wiand, the “Receiver,” asking him for a formal offer, in writing. No response was forthcoming until the letter from Wiand, November 6. It said that he had an agreement in principle to purchase the lease.
Because the bidding process the Receiver was using required confidentiality on the part of the bidders for them to see the financial records of the Jet Center, the city could not possibly be engaged in that process because of Sunshine Law stipulations. So no action was contemplated nor taken by council. No “due diligence” would have been possible.
Council authorized Turner and attorneys representing the city to meet with Wiand to offer to settle the dispute about the Jet Center’s application to build four hangers.
At that meeting, Turner offered to allow the four hangers to be built. In exchange, the city asked that the receiver/owner would move the four hangers to a site further from Airport Avenue and nearby residences [to a site] already approved by the FAA for future hanger development. The current site under dispute is marked for a “terminal” and “apron,” not for hangers.
The city offered to pay all costs to extend utilities to the new hanger site.
The city offered to give the receiver $130,000 a sum approximating the rent paid previously on a five-acre site east of the disputed property that is not now scheduled for construction.
The offerings were legitimate offerings and our attorneys were there so that any counter-offers could be analyzed and recommendations brought to council for final approval.
Wiand never responded to this offer and did not reply to two follow-up, phone calls from Turner. His statements about this offer in the letter and in the Part 16 filings are deliberately misleading--they were bona fide offers.
Speaking for myself, my impressions are that if Wiand has a viable offer and the purchaser meets the city’s financial review of the ability to build the hangars, I would not oppose that action. I stated this at the last council meeting. I anticipate a majority approval, but that remains to be seen.
I would ask the city manager and city attorney to see if the new lessee would agree to moving the hangars consistent with our offer to Wiand. The noise and air pollution effects on the neighbors would be positive from such a move. The airport, although saddled with a lease for the Jet Center that does not provide increased revenues from any and all new hangers on the site, would still receive revenues from the lessee under current terms.
It is council's stated intention that leases in the future will be more favorable to the airport.
--Ed Martin, 11/07/09
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Wiand figured out that Roger Jernigan was a schmuck with a shady past (see his firing from the Sheriff's Office, not just what he was fired for but what else he was being investigated for, plus the fact that he was Nadel's right-hand man).
ReplyDeleteJernigan figured out that whoever Wiand gets as an owner won't want him around. Jernigan also figured out, probably quite correctly, that the only new owner dumb enough to keep him on would be the city, so Jernigan makes a pitch, saying he's calling on behalf of the receiver.
Wiand probably never approved the offer, or, if he did, it was a "yeah, whatever, let me know what you come up with" just to get Jernigan off of the phone after Jernigan mentioned (beg, beg, beg) the idea to Wiand.
City heard Jernigan's offer, thinks it came from Wiand, so the city asked Wiand, "OK, well, what all are we talking about here?"
Wiand, irritated with the whole mess, promptly and viciously swats anything that he sees moving and, as such, he propogates a couple of new hilarious fictions.
Why else would Jernigan come up with the idea and make the offer, supposedly for Wiand? I don't see Wiand using Jernigan as his spokesman, plus Wiand is now denying the validity of any such offer of sale to the city. Thus: this offer naver came from Wiand, despite what Jernigan communicated to the city.
So as to Jernigan's foot-eating move of offering up the Jet Center to the city, no other possible version of events that I can come up with makes any sense. Jernigan will, of course, deny this, so there's no sense asking him.
In the meantime, the newspapers assume the city has actually made a legitimate offer to buy the Jet Center (which never, in fact, ever happened, only a preliminary inquiry was made, based on Jernigan's loopy bogus offer).
With that, the fun begins with Giles and Hackett reporting that the city's (in reality, non-existent) offer to purchase the Jet Center has been slammed down.
Add water, reader's comments based on their reaction to a created fiction that they now believe as truth, stir and voila: INSTANT BOGUS CONTROVERSY!!!!!
Hizzoner's letter does little to dispel the controversy. It's really wordy and convoluted, though, a good scheme usually used for hiding the truth, but in this case city hall needed the truth to come out clear.
Ed: You're trying to be polite with an angry mob that is setting fire to your house. "Please, can't we all just be friends" ain't gonna work against a mob of media liars and misled lunatics like Wilmore who are waiting to capitalize on the lies.
Now if you will excuse me, I have to do my morning routine of banging my head on my desk.
So what you're telling us is that the commercial interests and their media shills are characterized by desperation and more than the usual number of liars, and that Ed Martin, while having a heart of gold and being a terrific administrator is dull as dishwater.
ReplyDeleteI thought this blog was supposed to let us know things that aren't common knowledge.