| (approx. one year later, Kulick handled SPR-05-08, a substantially identical site plan circumstance, in the same manner as SPR-04-08) | SPR-04-08 Page 6 of 22 Denied Due Process |
From: "cindy bradley"
To: "bojoda"
Sent: Tuesday, October 18, 2005 1:46 PM
Subject: Re: ppp-10-01 SPR-04-08
Mr. Preston had a packet delivered to my home Friday evening containing a chronology and various internal memos and opinions. I wasn't able to get to it until Monday afternoon. I spent several hours digesting the material piece by piece. I compiled a list of question/observations that were not real easy friendly ones. I called Mr. Preston just before 5:00 and expressed my continued "trouble" with the material. He agreed that he and Mr. Kulick would meet with me this morning.
At the meeting I expressed a good deal of concern and unhappiness at the way the situation had been handled from the start. They admitted that Mr. Kulick had errored in his interpretation of the zoning ordinance in May of '04. Mr. Kulick expressed strongly that the error on his part, in May of 04 was not intentional. I have, of course, no way of knowing, when someone admits to an error, whether it was intentional or not.
I expressed the most concern about what happened next. It is my opinion, that once it is discovered that an error may have been made, that we (the city) should investigate further, on our own initiative, find out what mistake, if any, was made, and do what we could do to fix the mistake as quickly as possible. That would certainly have been my preference.
As you know, what happened in actuality, was that it was somehow decided to avoid getting or giving a legal opinion on whether the planning commission had the authority to issue the site plan until the 30 day appeal period was up. This is the point that bothers me the most and the point upon which I expressed the most "concern".
I expressed the strong belief that if we think we may have made a mistake, it shouldn't be up to the citizens to cough up $250 to tell us so.
Here is another point that I made. If I hired an attorney, and I asked him a very direct question, and he answered me to the effect of " I don't think it's appropropriate for me to answer you for another 30 days (at which point it's too late), I would seriously consider not using that attorney any more."
So what I was asking myself was - Did the attorney come to this decision to NOT decide all by himself, or was he requested to NOT come to a decision because that decision might not be what we wanted to hear?
So I asked that outloud to Mr. Kulick, who insisted that he never requested the attorney to NOT give an opinion for 30 days. He insisted that the attorney was the one who suggested this. He looked me in the eye and appeared to be sincere and said something to the effect of swearing on a stack of bibles.
The attorney was not present during all of this, so I couldn't get any further with this line of questioning. Mr. Preston said he would set me up with an appointment with the attorney after the attorney returns from vacation.
