City Council Receives Lawsuit Threat

A group of Grove citizens headed by Earl Barnes, who is also behind the call for a Grand Jury investigation of city officials, is calling for recovery of funds spent by the city in its lawsuits involving Earl Shero, a Grove area resident.
Barnes is threatening to sue City Manager Bill Galletly and City Clerk Bonnie Buzzard for treble damages, in the action delivered to city council members this week, unless current council members "immediately institute or diligently prosecute proper proceedings."
He cites Title 62, Section 372 and 373 of the Oklahoma State Statutes as the basis for his demand. This allows a taxpayer to institute a suit on "failure of officers."
However, the same statute provides for "frivolous lawsuits...if all claims stated by the resident taxpayers are determined in a court of competitent jurisdiction to be frivolous, the taxpayers who signed the demand shall be liable for all attorney fees and court costs incurred by the public officers."
The demand letter is signed by Earl & Sally Barnes; Carl and Sarabeth Thompson; Mike Haynes; Harold & Evelyn Lee; Dave Williams; Thomas Melton and Linda Poynor.
In one case, the city's insurance carrier paid $20,000 to settle one of the lawsuits and Galletly and Buzzard paid the remaining amounts from their own funds, according to a councilman.
In the other, the city paid $27,949.97 in the settlement of a case involving Shero, and Barnes alleges that Galletly, Buzzard and former city attorney Dorothy Parker filed suit against Shero without city council approval, a violation of the Open Meetings Act. Galletly said that council did approve the payment.
Galletly said Thursday that it was the Court that ordered the payment of $27,949.97 and the city had no choice in the matter; in the insurance carrier matter, all cities and towns in Oklahoma except for Tulsa and Oklahoma City pay premiums to the Oklahoma Municipal Insurance Group and the legal expenses were paid out of the total insurance pool of funds.
"They are out of line, entirely," said Galletly, of the 10 individuals who signed the demand.
The action requests that the city council "engage an independent, competent and experienced municipal legal counsel in your analysis of this demand" and that "failure in your required duties after having this proper notice of the facts shall result in legal action to recover for the taxpayers of Grove triple the value of all such sums of money so paid as a penalty to you, the proper officers of Grove, Ok." Treble damages could amount to about $150,000. The letter requests that "you not rely on an opinion from the City Attorney who is directly subordinate to the city manager."
The letter goes on to say "because of the criminal acts of its employees and after notification from the District Attorney the City of Grove should not have allowed its employees to file an insurance claim on its publicly funded insurance policy. Nor should the City of Grove settled the lawsuit of Grove v David Earl Shero without recovery of city monies from its City Attorney, City Manager, and City Clerk for their criminal acts."
Interestingly enough, the Grove Airport Board is asking the city to indemnify them in case of a lawsuit against them, in their "stipulation" list to be considered at Tuesday night's council meeting.

An Editorial...Another Lawsuit for City

There is a small segment of the Grove populace that wants to bring the city to a complete meltdown. They want to separate the rest of the citizens from the ballot box, where people go to elect their government.
At the last election the people spoke, again, to rid the city of "good old boys" control. They elected people to the city council that promised to lead the city into the future and vote based on sound decisions rather than personal gain. The council again reaffirmed that they wanted City Manager Bill Galletly to manage the city on a sound business basis.
But that spoiled the misguided's plan, to control the city for their own gain.
In recent weeks a petition has been filed for a Grand Jury investigation of violations and matters, most of which have already been settled in court or won by the city, or considered lacking in merit by the District Attorney.
The latest blast came this week with a demand letter signed by 10 Grove citizens, seeking recovery of public funds in two of the previous lawsuits. One of them was ordered settled by a Federal Judge; the other was covered by a city insurance policy.
We find this demand, and the Grand Jury request, just plain nuts. It is forcing our officials to spend valuable time answering these issues, wasting taxpayer money. And recent Council meetings have been dominated by the airport board's refusal to transfer property to the city to protect it from risk in case of a lawsuit, a discussion that is longer than a daytime soap opera.
Are the rest of Grove's residents going to sit idly by while a few others try to bring the city to its knees?
We suggest that Grove's positive minded citizens call Earl Barnes and and the others who signed the latest missive and remind them that they should take their complaints elsewhere.
We also suggest you call Gary Tripensee, chairman of the airport trust authority, to let him know you want the city's property protected and to accept the city's latest offer to settle the matter.
And wouldn't it be ironic if the Grand Jury investigation goes into areas that would bite back the instigators, and the latest demand on the Council was found to be frivolous and the signees had to pay the city's legal and court expenses?

Airport Board Says OK, With Stipulations

The Grove Municipal Airport Authority trustees voted 3-1 to accept the Grove City Council's motion for transferring airport property to the city, but with five stipulations, which were discussed for more than an hour at Wednesday's special meeting.
These included the indemnification and defense of the trustees in the event of legal action against the board in connection with the transfer of the property; updating the legal descriptions of the co-owned land and the portion to remain under airport title; inserting a clause that the city will not terminate the lease in the event there is no debt; the land to be co-titled will be valued at $100,000 and identified by mutual agreement; and the city will pay the legal expenses required to transfer the property to the city.
Voting Nay was Gary Tripensee. Member Harry Halterman was absent.
When asked if any member of the board had been threatened by a lawsuit from a citizen, Tripensee said he had several calls warning against board members' violations of the trust agreement.
Trust attorney Dave Jones said the District Attorney's office had called him regarding a complaint from City Manager Bill Galletly for violations of the state's Open Meetings Act. Jones said "there have been no violations of the Open Meetings Act" by the trustees but an investigation is ongoing.
Galletly said Thursday that he had not requested any action from the District Attorney unless the airport manager failed to turn over, on the second request, a letter from their attorney David Jones to Grand Savings Bank. Just prior to leaving town for four days he had a meeting with the City Police Chief, Mayor Nuckolls, and Debbie Mavity, assistant city manager, who had gone to the airport seeking the letter. She had returned without it, as Airport Manager Terry Abercrombie said she had to check with Dave Jones, the airport board's attorney before releasing it. At 5:07 p.m. Friday Abercrombie faxed the letter to City Hall, she said. Galletly said the police department went ahead and requested the inquiry on its own.
In other Agenda items, the clean-up of Site 6A at the airport was discussed. Trustee David Adzigian said the board had a verbal agreement with the city regarding cleanup and removal of dirt "and we need to remind them again. The board agreed to send a letter to the city manager.
The board also agreed to transfer a land lease on a hanger leased by Max Schuermann, to Ronald Latimer; agreed to send airport manager Terry Abercrombie and one other board member to the OAOA Conference March 12-14 in Oklahoma City, with them paying their own way for the time being.
A previous commitment from Troy Kyman, Grove businessman, to pay for the trip out of his company, was rejected as "illegal."
The board also set the date for the next meeting, to be Thursday, Mar. 16 at 1 p.m. in Room 5 at City Hall.
The board also discussed a 20-year Capital Improvement Plan but revised the priorities of land acquisition, putting property north of the airport ahead of a parcel of property west of the airport, since more land was needed for additional runway length.

The Canine Corner...by Missy MacTavish

I was watching teevee again the other night and saw the weirdest program…
There were a couple of dozen really nice looking ladies in the same black dresses with the same substantial cleavage holding shiny briefcases which contained substantial sums of money. This ranged from $25 to $750,000 and the deal was, the contestant was to guess if his case had the big money in it or not. If it had the small money he would win big.
The contestant and his wife called each other "baby" all the time although they were both grownups.
There were lots of commercials in between the suitcase guessing contest. People were screaming at each other to deal or no deal. As the contestant made guesses, the nice looking young ladies climbed off what looked like bleachers at small town basketball games. Every so often, someone called The Banker would phone the show up and try to bribe the contestant to take the money and run.
Honest, I could not make this up.
Then, over on another network there was this nice man who had to make a decision between the girl next door and the girl that just wanted to win the show but in the meantime they went out on dates and took jets to exciting places. What fun. In the end, the nice man gave a rose to the girl he selected and then they went their separate ways just like all the other men before him, including one that lives down the street sometimes. They call this show The Bachelor. There's a reason these guys are Bachelors.
The things that people come up with these days…
I think we doggies have the right ideas. We don't need money and when it comes to choosing a mate, we do a sniff here, a sniff there and things go a poppin.
Until next time, Miss Missy.