Dear Mayor and Commissioners:
I had the opportunity to observe much of Attorney Joslyn's
performance at the meeting during which he recommended the City pay $1.6M to
settle Greater Bay v. The City of Lake Worth. He blamed his
diffidence in going to trial on local bloggers, activists, and former
Commissioners, but neglected to include his own firm's action and
lack of action as the first and main cause of the
problem.
Boose, Casey, Ciklin, et al sent two attorneys to be present
at the 2 days of contract negotiations between the City and Greater Bay,
presumably to protect Lake Worth's interest. Apparently neither of these
contract and real estate professionals, nor any other members of
their firm did any background check of Mr. Peter Willard before drafting
up a three part contract, giving him control of what was to happen at the
Beach for well over 40 years.
Had they done even the most cursory investigation of Mr.
Willard's record, red flags would have been raised which likely would have
stopped the partnership. Instead, a three part contract was drafted,
the 40+ year term of which violated the City Charter and put the City
in jeopardy.
The Construction phase of the contract set no time limit on
Greater Bay's finishing the project. This was so egregious that Mr.
Willard himself laughed up his sleeve at its inadequacy in protecting the
City.
Casey, Ciklin then unsuccessfully attempted to defend the 3
leases, which were in violation of the City Charter, and were in the
aggregate, indefensible. Judge Fine heard their Motion to Dismiss and said,
"Your motion is alluring, but I'm going to deny it."
In total, the contract has resulted in a loss of almost $3M
for the City of Lake Worth and its taxpayers, a loss that could have been avoided
had Boose, Casey, Ciklin etal investigated Mr. Peter Willard's background and
had they drafted contracts that were legally sufficient, given the parameters
of our City Charter.
Perhaps this firm has done some work beneficial to the City
in the past, but I suggest that it may be time for the City to seek
alternate representation, should the need for outside counsel present itself in
the future.
Sincerely,
Laurence McNamara
Chairman, Citizens Come First
21 comments:
That's too funny. Now all you have to do is post an excuse from Mulvehill, Jennings and Golden combined with you trying to spin the outcome since the taxpayers lost $2.4 million you'll have the holy trinity of who really is to blame.
Sorry you can't handle the truth. You have never been able to do that. The only thing you have done in this regard is to take the side of the flim flam man. It is really sick when someone wants the city to lose and delights in it. Can you ever get over the fact that we didn't raze the building and that it was built exactly where it was since 1922? I think it is time that you enlighten yourself to the facts instead of harping that we kicked them off the beach--a NO NO in your eyes because people should not EVER BREAK CONTRACTS even if they would be detrimental to the city.
The snark Amorosa was telling everyone in the downtown yesterday about the letter. These three certainly have a problem with what went on here. Amorosa, go back to getting campaign contributions from dylan.
It is sickening that the city settled but it is time now to move on and have the best beach around. Hopefully we have learned from all of our mistakes but I doubt it. As long as there are politicians in charge getting bad advice, this sort of thing will continue. It is up to us to continue to speak out even if they don't listen.
In respone, lawyers have no duty to investigate the parties involved in a contract. It really doesn't matter who they are or what they are about. If you write a contact for a client it needs to protect that client from every possible contingency. Every well written contract should have an escape clause with clear directions on the method to get out of the deal. The problem here was that while the majority of the commission was in favor of the deal with G B, the majority along with citizens groups were working to stop the project. As soon as a commissioner acted to support theses groups the contract was broken. The failure was really on the part of our in house counsel to protect the city by advising commissioners what they could and could not do to stop this project and on the failure of the majority of the commission in favor of the project to speak out and do something to offset what was being done by the majority. Until we know what was actually done by each party, which requires an investigation we are not going to learn from this mistake. Finally, I would not have hired the same firm that wrote the contract to defend this suit and I would have gotten a second opinion before terminating the deal. Bad legal advice all the way around.
Sorry Mr. MacNamera, but I believe your lawsuit had a negative effect on this situation. It would have been better for our former esteemed commissioners to have let the people vote on whether to void the contract, than to make that decision on their own. They made the decision, so therefore they own it!
JOHN--The lawyers should have advised the city to do its due diligence. They obviously did not do that because if they had, the city would have known of the 20 pages of judgments. Why in hell do we pay small fortunes to lawyers? So they can FU*% up deals? The Mcnamara/Mccauley law suit saved the city, John. Where in heck have you been?
So if this logic is carried forward, the attorney who is representing our city in negotiations regarding the electric wholesaler contract should advise us against taking any of the contracts since they all have serious potential backlashes?
How about those crack advisors who put us together with County Water (how much did that cost us?) the FMPA, the decision to self insure on the beach we now have (can you say pool?)
Let's face it, anyone doing business with this city can almost certainly go back afterward and sue and get $$.
We have plenty of pending litigation right now for many reasons.
Larry's assertion of the contract being for 40 plus years is hogwash. If the charter states max 20 years without voter, you structure the deal for 20 years minus one day. Rocket science.
Maura Hennessey said she alerted each and every one of our commissioners of Willards inability to get financing and advised them to wait him out. How come they didn't listen to her?
Sylvia-The citizens don't have the right to vote on every thing that happens in this city. That is why we have elected officials and why we have highly paid staff--to give us the CORRECT INFORMATION in order to make the correct decisions. In this case, we had three (3) lawyers who said we could end this "partnership" with GB. We then hire Joslyn to win our case. What does he do?
Because, Maura Hennessy is NOT A LAWYER. Maura can't READ THE MIND OF A FLIM FLAM ARTIST. He HAD THE ABILITY in the contract, TO HOLD UP OUR BEACH FOREVER. He held us up to hostage in the end and he could have done that even if wed had not booted him out of town.
Now I know you believe the contract was for 20 years minus a day but not according to another prestigious law firm. This was gone over with a fine tooth comb thus the law suit. So, let's not go there. These people would not have dropped their law suit and only did so after GB was no longer on our beach. They would have pursued it to the end.
And they would have lost because their claim was hogwash. At the time they were claiming/complaining that the 20 years didn't include construction time.
I would love to see a detailed investigation and report about what actually happened so we could all see the best commission ever, McNamara and a certain unamed blogger just screwed the tax payers out of $2.4 million and the argument about who to blame is settled forever.
"Now I know you believe the contract was for 20 years minus a day but not according to another prestigious law firm".
Which firm? The firm that was unethical enough to take Mcnamara's money even though they knew no lease could be for more than 20 years?
How much did they charge your good buddy Mcnamara? Took him for a good ride. Unfortunately too Lake Worth tax payers for a bad ride too.
YOU ARE REALLY AN UNINFORMED PERSON ANONY ABOVE. ASK THE BLOGGER WHO TOOK THE SIDE OF THE CON MAN. HE HAD EVERYTHING TO DO WITH BAD INFORMATION BEING DISSEMINATED TO THE PUBLIC. IF ANY MOCK JURY WAS CONFUSED IT WAS BECAUSE OF HIM TAKING THE SIDE OF A %^&*.
Very few can state the facts more simply and convincingly. The city F'd themself!
Well, anonymous at 2:22, we should have gone to trial. Instead we have a bunch of wimps running city hall. Perhaps we all should just dream up a law suit. We are bound to be wealthier than before we went in. Let's get Wes, John, Peggy, the trio and Loretta to run the city. :( Hell, we can actually learn something from a con man and be a part of the 1 percent. THANK YOU LAKE WORTH.
LOL. That will probably be the investigative team LOL. Great stuff.
The mediator between GB and the city when the contract was written was Wes Blackman.
Thanks a lot Wes!
What in the hell is wrong with that blogger? He cost us $2.4 mil? OMG. haha
Listening to the joint workshop with the HRBP/P&Z Board complaining cause the city give them computers or print out the 300 pages of back-up for them.
Get real -buy your own laptops.
They have no idea what is involved with being on an advisory board.
And this is the PROFESSIONAL board!
RE: above - complaining because the city didn't give them computers nor print out the 300 pages of back-up.
the Greater Bay mess up was clearly the responsibility of the city of lake worth from beginning to end. Why is it that no one can ever take responsibility but would rather play the blame game.
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