It has been 17 years and 167 days since the city’s pledge to build the West Branch Library. On June 17, 2015, Judge Dawn M. Bergin was presented the City of Glendale’s motion for modification of the Temporary Restraining Order in the City vs. Ice Arizona litigation. The city may no longer be compelled to make its next quarterly payment of $3,750,000 to Ice Arizona on July 1, 2015.
Rather than comment at this time (that will come in a future blog) I have provided a link to the city’s motion and Exhibits A through Q as well as the proposed judge’s ruling: City of Glendale motion June 18 2015 .
I would urge those of you interested in the latest events surrounding the city and Ice Arizona to read the motion in its entirety especially the emails provided as exhibits. I suspect that the email exhibits used for this motion to modify the Temporary Restraining Order are not the entirety of emails the city has in its possession. I assume that the city used a sampling necessary to substantiate their request for modification.
Question: What’s Ice Arizona’s next move? What will they do to cover the interest payments on their tremendous debt now that they might no longer have the city’s $15 million to use?
© Joyce Clark, 2015
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Hopefully, the team will decide to move.
Downtown, I HOPE.
If not, it is inevitable that they leave.
Enough of the embarrassment.
The city of Glendale wanted to be a sports mecca.
They blundered into it, then backed out. The laughter across the sports world about this sad saga is humiliating.
I don’t think the council has a choice at this point. I would do the same and the hockey team means a lot to me.
Pro teams do not belong in small towns.
Colin Cowherd said on his show that in the future, despite all the salary caps, ONLY the big forward moving cities will have professional sports teams.
He said there will someday be 4 or 5 or 8 sports teams in LA, Chicago, New York even Detroit and Boston.
That makes a lot of sense. Already many more AHL teams are moving to the LA/Anaheim area…
It’s different with the Cardinals right now because as they are it is a situation where the tail is wagging the dog.
The Cardinals own the small burg of Glendale.
Until, they start losing again, or fail to draw properly.
Im sure sorry..
I came from a part of the country where all they had was chocolate festivals and twinkling lights night or whatever its called.
And…….. libraries…
I was glad to get the hell out of there.
But, I don’t blame Glendale and the council one bit. The city is strapped for cash..
Well, well, well… It looks like the City of Glendale DOES INDEED have a case against the greed of Leblanc and the rest of the Ice Arizona group… And a very strong one at that.. Much the opposite of what the Coyotes fans have been saying!!!
I have a feeling that Leblanc & co. are going to be BEGGING to renegotiate this horribly lopsided “deal”!!
Excellent job, Ms. Clark… I do believe you are the first one to “break” this story!!! ☺
Joyce,
I clicked on the link provided but it took me to a site regarding a case against Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem.
Can you help me with this?
Thank you in advance.
Will check it and get back on comments in a minute or two.
It’s going to U.S. Vs. Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem
OK Everyone. I got the link from the Arizona Republic. It now seems to be corrupted. I printed out the docs. Am going to scan them in and then link up to my scanned docs. This will take 15-30 minutes as there are approximately 100 pp
Thank you, Joyce, for your hard work in making this information available.
Long and interesting read.
This link isn’t taking me to anything related to the Coyotes or Glendale Joyce.
I AM SCANNING THE DOCUMENTS NOW. WILL POST A REVISED LINK AS SOON AS THE TASK IS COMPLETED. THE LINK FROM THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC SITE APPEARS TO BE CORRUPTED.
http://t.co/KcNqVWgvju Smoking gun!
Thank you Danny. For all of those who could not get the correct link. It has been corrected and you can now access the files.
Judging by the TRO exhibits… I think the Coyotes are about to lose their lease.
The stuff with Frisoni isn’t particularly strong… but she nicely planted herself into the “securing” part of ARS 38-511. But that Tindall landmine… yikes. Almost all categories of ARS 38-511 is hit. He is the one who brought up Leblanc to the mayor? Initiation. He created the lease (preliminary structure carried forward from JIG lease), he recommended changes to the draft. On top of that a couple of the emails can be considered as securing and entering himself into negotiations.
The friendship with leblanc that existed previously to everything? Just… lol. That about sums that up.
Thing is… the judge just needs to agree there was a single infraction.
Glendale says there is more, too.
You ignore one HUGE fact. In Tindalls severance package, the COG waived his “conflict of interest” clause. The COG agreed he could go to work for ANYONE else. By the way, when the Coyotes were thinking of contracting (different than her being an employee) they ASKED the COG for the OK. it was granted.
2 points that destroy Glendales arguement.
The 2nd example was Ms Frisoni
Jim…i would be very surprised if a law that is designed to protect taxpayers from conflicts of interest can be rendered inert by waiving it in a severance agreement. That to me is preposterous. ..it would be like saying you can steal from the city for a period of 12 months and we waive any right to having you charged with theft from the taxpayers. The law is required to be written into each contract and that on itself shows the significance it has. Any law could be superseded by a contract if this premise allows to stand. “If you quit now we will write in that you can punch every city employee once as you leave the building”. They may not consent but that’s ok the assault law won’t apply because we waived it.” Well the state by writing this law to me says the city can’t consent to negating thus law on the taxpayers behalf either. Just my opinion.
Waiving conflict of interest is only in the normal duties of the employee. Tindall bringing forth Leblanc to the council is a massive breach of protocol. Waivers also require counsel to detail explicitly what the risks of a future conflict entail and the client must have complete understanding of those risks. Blanket waivers can be dismantled by the court in a case like this because the city was unaware of all the facts.
The waiver itself is an illegible mess… and I quote
“The City, with informed consent from its attorneys, hereby waives any conflict of Employee or a law firm with which Employee may become affiliated regarding transactional matters previously handled by Employee for the City”
Being affiliated with, sure? But does this waiver exempt the clause in the lease? And I quote
“Each Party, including direct (not remote) each member, official, representative and employee of the City shall, at all times while this Agreement is in effect, be bound by all Applicable Law pertaining to conflicts of interest, and, to the extent prohibited by such laws, no City representative shall have any direct (not remote) personal interest in this Agreement or participate in any decision relating to this Agreement that relates to his or her personal interest or the interest of any entity in which he or she is, directly or indirectly, interested. ”
Then there’s the issue of if the waiver can exempt his involvement from the perspective of state law. Very questionable.
Remember… Tindall was an employee until October 1st, 2013. So when he fired off en email to the city on september 20th, 2013… he was directly violating the contract, regardless of the waiver as he was still employed by the city of Glendale therefore still bound by the contract. The modified TRO that Glendale submitted shows clear conflict of interest breaches prior to the waiver being signed. Waivers are intended to clear FUTURE conflict of interest issues, not past.
Then the issue of Frisoni… it’s ok to contract her, so long as she does absolutely nothing regarding arena management at GRA. Procurement of events falls under the lease agreement.
Evidence against her involvement in the lease isn’t as strong, but it could still be used due to the importance of the information passing hands.
Coyotes kept hammering at her not being involved in negotiation… but 38-511 says it has to be one of the following “initiating, negotiating, creating, drafting or securing” of the contract.
Doesn’t look too good for the Coyotes, in my opinion.
@Geoff Kerr & @Pizzacat
Both of you nailed this!! Couldn’t have said it better myself!!!
Well done!! 🙂