2005-02-14 Regular Meeting and Public Hearing Meeting of the La Porte City Council minutes

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City Council Regular Meeting I Public Hearing - February 14,2005 Page 2 Ayes: Beasley, Engelken, Moser, Mosteit, Clausen, Porter, Ebow and Rigby Nays: None Abstain: None 5. PETITIONS, REMONSTRANCES, COMMUNICATIONS, AND CITIZENS AND TAX PAYERS WISHING TO ADDRESS COUNCIL ON ANY ITEM POSTED ON THE AGENDA Citizen Bill Scott of 1802 Lomax School Road, La Porte, Texas spoke about the Board of Adjustments. At the last Council Meeting, a Councilmember asked if the Board of Adjustments is liberal in its decisions. That question is a good start, but I want to make it very clear that the evidence I have presented and will be presenting over the coming months is not about liberal Board of Adjustments decisions; it is about the Board of Adjustments Chairman repeatedly violating the law, repeatedly violating the sworn oath to uphold the law, repeatedly violating the standards of fairness required of a Chairman, and he did all that and more in just one Board of Adjustments Hearing held on June l, 2000 and it was about the feedlot. Then he topped it all off by signing the pile oflies that the City calls findings-of-fact and conclusions of law. At five minutes a session it will take several Council sessions to present the hard evidence that proves what I say, so let's get started. Violation Number 1: The law governing the Board of Adjustments is City Ordinance 99-2319, Section 4 of that law states that the Public Hearings are generally conducted in the following manner: Proponents of a measure speak first; opponents speak second; and then proponents give rebuttal and summation. There is a very strong reason for that order of speaking. Any of you that have been involved in a debate or the court system know that the second speaker has a huge advantage of knowing all of the first speaker's evidence before he has to speak, so he knows what he can get away with and what he cannot. Analogy is a card game, where one player has to play his cards face up, like the first speaker and one gets to hold his cards to his vest, like the second speaker. That's a rigged game; isn't it? To make up somewhat for the second speaker's huge advantage, the first speaker gets a final rebuttal and summation. That did not happen in the June 1 sl hearing; your Board of Adjustment Chairman, Sidney Grant, reversed the written order of the law and of the agenda and made me, the opponent, speak first and present all of my evidence, so the feedlot group could see all of my evidence and know what lies they could tell, and lie they did. One of the feedlot proponent's star witness, the barn manager, lied several times on major issues and we will go into the details of that in the future. He lied in his speech, twice he exposed himself as a liar with his own statements and your board chairman tried to laugh it off and brush over the barn manager's self exposed lies, and these were major ones. The Lomax mafia lied about the facts and slandered me for over two hours; I made many pages of notes to rebut their statements, but when I got up to speak, your Board of Adjustment Chairman limited me to seven minutes. I had to speak without my notes, and your Chairman spent part of my seven minutes attempting to harass me like he was the attorney for the feedlot group. Just before he limited me to seven minutes, your Chairman told the feedlot owner, Bobby Blackwell, twice, that he could have all the time to say all he was going to say, and again I quote, "I'm going let you say all you want to say." How would you like to be abused by that obvious double standard, Council. If you think you can excuse the blatant injustice and law violations committed by your Board Chairman with Item 4.7