John Bell Responds to WtP articles.

From: John D. Bell
To: John Kelley (email addresses removed)
Sent: Sunday, September 20, 2009 3:27:03 PM
Subject: Coliseum Project

John (Kelley),

I read your article posted about the Coliseum and have heard about your comments to Council and others. The City Legal Dept amd I do not have any disagreements in our legal analysis concerning these issues. Whatever "official" told you I was hired because they wanted different answers is woefully mistaken.

I was

asked to provide a second opinion on the different issues primarily because of the on-again, off-again park use proposal, but in the final analysis we agree -- you cannot reprogram the use of parkland in a lease as the one proposed for McCaughan Park without an election.

Due to the complexity of the issues and the proposal, the City wanted someone to take a second look and make sure they had not missed anything. I did turn up a deed restriction issue in the State patent from 1919 and 1945 that would have come up when the bankers started reviewing the title documents, but that issue was resolved with some special legislation in 1957. (No, I wasn't responsible for that.) (Bell's parentheses)

So there is not any legal disagreement between me and the legal staff.

As for your citing of the park ordinances in 2002, 2005 and 2006, I studied those master plan ordinances as well as the SCADP and BMP ordinances. None of them mandated a park at this particular spot, although the SCADP notes that a festival area could be at this or any of five other possible sites.

Saying an area in the future might be the site of a park does not make it one. And TPW has confirmed that they only consider an area a park if it is improved with park funds. As a result, we all agree that the play area created at the north end of the site is subject to the legal restrictions of a park and has been excluded from the possible lease and site development plan.

I am not representing the developer in this project and I have no vested interest in the project. I did work as a young lawyer for the city on the possibility of building the new City hall at that location. As a result, I did a lot of research on its restrictions back in the early 80's.

It would not have bothered me one bit if I had turned up a fatal legal flaw in my research on this site. In fact, I thought I had when I turned up the 1919 and 1945 puplic purpose restrictions. But those were resolved when I found the 1957 bill.

As a lawyer I am simply calling the legal issues based on the reality of the documents and what they require and what they do not. The City Council deserves knowing that before it makes its decision.

John