The City-County Observer Was Correct Concerning the Executive Inn Trigger Date Extension

By Don Counts, Editor

On Monday August 2, 2010 the City-County Observer published an article that stated that Audra Levy, the Communications Director for Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel had informed us that the “Trigger Date” between Browning Investments and the Evansville Redevelopment Commission had been amended to August 23, 2010.
Here is what the Law Says:

“It is well-settled in Indiana that boards and commissions speak or act officially only through the minutes and records made at a duly organized meeting.” Brademas v. St. Joseph County Commissioners, 621 N.E.2d 1133,1137 ( Ind. Ct. App. 1993)

In an exchange of emails between a reader of the CCO and Ms. Levy regarding transparency within the local government, Ms. Levy explained the reason for the extension of the “Trigger Date” and that the extension was really “about” 60 days. While that is accurate, being “about” right has no value in legal contracts or horseshoes. Her specific use of the term “about” along with other parts of her email confirms that the City-County Observer was correct in our assertions.

The authorship of “Amendment 1” was simply lacking in attention to detail and could have provided grounds for legal complications. As it turns out Browning’s decision to return ownership of the Executive Inn to the City of Evansville has served to mitigate any potential complications that could have resulted from having the details of “Amendment 1” not exactly matching Resolution 10-ERC-65 that was passed by the Evansville Redevelopment Commission on May 13, 2010, that granted John Kish’s request for a 60 day extension. The legal details at this point have been rendered moot

What is not a moot point and should not be neglected is that someone intentionally wrote “Amendment 1” in a way that was not in conformance with the minutes of the ERC meeting where the extension was authorized. Why would the author of “Amendment 1” do such a thing? Was this to grant additional days without authority to do so? Was this to see if Mr. Goldman could be tricked into signing something that was not conforming to the minutes of the meeting? Was this because the author cannot count to 60 or read a calendar? It is truly baffling, because if the date of August 23rd was requested it would have most certainly been granted.

Good and effective local governance depends on accuracy and openness. Once again, the citizens of Evansville were not given the respect of accuracy and openness. This time we were fortunate. Next time we may not be so fortunate. The devil as they say is in the details, and luckily this time we didn’t get burned. It should not take a “good cop, bad cop” investigative reporting team to have legal documents written as they were authorized and to get public disclosure of important issues of public interests.

Over the course of the last several months, the City-County Observer has in our “Is It True” column, predicted that the Executive Inn project would not obtain financing and that the Executive Inn along with its adjacent parking garage would need to be demolished due to structural problems. Mole #3 will henceforth be known as the Nostradamus of local politics.