ATTORNEY/CLIENT SESSION CITY OF LAKE WORTH Part II - NOVEMBER 14, 2012

ATTORNEY/CLIENT SESSION

CITY OF LAKE WORTH

CITY OF LAKE WORTH

CITY MANAGER'S OFFICE

7 NORTH DIXIE HIGHWAY

LAKE WORTH, FLORIDA

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2012

4:52 p.m. - 6:15 p.m.

IN ATTENDANCE: 

Pam Triolo, Mayor

Scott Maxwell, Vice Mayor

Christopher McVoy, Commissioner

Andy Amoroso, Commissioner

Michael Bornstein, City Manager

Glen Torciva, Esquire, Interim City Attorney

Brian Joslyn, Esquire, Outside Counsel

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MR. JOSLYN: [...] It's the, you know, it's Ms. Jennings and Ms. Mulvehill's behavior both in the public meetings, in the workshops, and behind the scenes that give rise to the risk that these guys are picking up on.

MAYOR TRIOLO: Commissioner McVoy?

COMMISSIONER MCVOY: A couple of things. I do have somewhat the same recollection although I didn't come on in 2009, I came on in 2010 November. But my recollection is that all along the argument was this is pretty much of a slam dunk. This is a easy to win case. And my concern is that we're now several hundred thousand dollars in to your office and now it's not an easy to win case. And I have a concern that either it is or it isn't and that information could have been determined earlier on into the process rather than later on and would have had some influence on things, so that's one concern.

MR. JOSLYN: Okay.

COMMISSIONER MCVOY: Another concern is because as you well know you were on the other side of the fence and I was on the other side of the fence at one time. I was personally sued with stuff that came to my door saying your house was at risk and that came from your office and that was not a happy situation. And what I was involved, I was a member of the PAC, political action committee that said this community does not want the zoning changed that was needed to make that whole deal go through. I have no idea whether that constitutes shady behind the scenes dealings or whatever. I was not involved with the Commission so as far as I'm concerned there was nothing involved. 

MR. JOSLYN: No, it had nothing to do with you.

COMMISSIONER MCVOY: I understand that. But I think you do have to understand that I don't know that the argument that the various Commissioners were involved in shady things. What they were involved in to the extent that I knew from sitting way on the sidelines and involved in that PAC is that there was very widespread feeling in the community that the changing of zoning that was being pushed in order to make this deal go through was not something that the community wanted. So of course there are going to be multiple viewpoints in a community and different Commissioners have different allegiance to different viewpoints. That's normal. I don't see how that is something that gets turned into sneaky or smelly ot whatever. That's normal political process.

MR. JOSLYN: When you have one of the Commissioners who appears to be involved in spreading false information about the project, that they were going to put a hotel up, that they were going to put a giant building and rent it out to like Saks Fifth Avenue, they were going to open a shopping center, I mean there were hundreds of pages of this stuff circulated around the town. There's a difference between being on the Commission and in city meetings saying I oppose this. There's a big difference between that and what they are tying Ms. Jennings to and Ms. Mulvehill to a certain extent. 

     The other thing was that she was asked point blank if she helped Ms. Mulvehill get elected and Ms. Jennings said no, that none of my people worked for -- I didn't give her any money, I didn't give her any support. And Ms. Mulvehill in her deposition said yeah, her workers came over and helped me and I talked to her about Straticon and blah, blah, blah. So there are some issues there.

     Now I'll say this also. Until we took these guy's depositions and beat up on them for a couple of days there was no way they were going to settle for this kind of amount of money. When we were talking to them the week before is was 16 million or nothing. So obviously they felt they had some risk as well, which is the concept of a settlement is that everybody believes they've got some risk and you try to minimize that risk.

     So yeah, I thought we had a strong case. I still think you've got a very good case. But if it goes against you then Katy bar the door because you're going to have a judgment you can't pay, and that's the issue.

VICE MAYOR MAXWELL: And I want to try to keep up.

COMMISSIONER MCVOY: There's a lot of moving parts.

VICE MAYOR MAXWELL: And a lot of questions. I was going to ask the City Manager earlier but I'll throw this one out here. What happens, what happens to this City if we go to trial and we lose and we get hit with a 7, 8, $10 million, $15 million judgment?

MAYOR TRIOLO: That was our thought when we were sitting in that meeting. You're looking at bankruptcy.

VICE MAYOR MAXWELL: Seriously can somebody bankrupt the City?

MR. TORCIVA: We talked about that. That was a concern we had.

VICE MAYOR MAXWELL: We're almost bankrupt now with the behavior of the previous Commission.

MR. BORNSTEIN: We are a public corporation. We can go bankrupt. We don't have the disposable funds to pay off a large settlement.

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