This post has a little something for everyone from the Goatherders to Good Government peeps plus we get to do a bit of compare and contrast:
- Lawsuit filed over Bay beach ‘comfort station’ ~ Dwayne Bremer
- Bay St. Louis residents file suit, want comfort station demolished ~ Donna Harris
The first story is still in its original form while the second was updated. It is unclear who the 22 residents are who filed suit against the Hancock County Board of Supervisors using the services of Goatherder lawyer Henry Laird as neither story mentions them and it may well be none ultimately have any standing to sue but Harris updated her story with comments from the property owner, American Legion Post 139, which is the exact context I heard about this budding controversy originally. Specifically:
The county has leased the property from American Legion Post 139 for 25 years, but the lease expired in November, post Commander Clayton Thompson said. Board attorney Ronnie Artigues said supervisors have been in negotiations to buy the property.
The board will meet Monday to discuss renewing the lease monthly until the property can be purchased, he said.
So the county constructs bathrooms on property it did not have any legal rights to and for some inexplicable reason did not bother to renew the lease on the property, which expired last November electing to break ground instead. Ignorant does not quite do the actions of the Board of Supervisors justice in this circumstance but earlier this month Bay Waveland School Board President Sherry Ponder attempted to swear in a school board member that had not yet been been appointed to the school board by the City. Sources indicate to Slabbed Ponder lashed out at the Alliance for Good Government member that pointed this out in the school board meeting which makes one wonder exactly which local government is more clueless, the School Board or the Board of Supervisors.
OTOH not much good law gets practiced when a Goatherder is involved so this one has FUBAR potential written all over it so it is worth keeping an eye on. This is about more than just building flood mitigated bathrooms IMHO.
The most dangerous thing about this whole affair is not just the smelly bathrooms at the end of a beachfront neighborhood, but the smelly actions of a
publicly paid attorney that seems to have a problem
entering other people’s property and taking it away from them. Check out the documents of the Bay Tech
Building Purchase by the Bay School Board, and a research of the minutes of the Hancock County Utility
Authority from 2005 forward will reveal a lot of eminent domain cases that were actually questioned in
some incidents by the Utility Board.
So, now we have a business man bilked out a quarter of a mil (he’s suing), 36mil in water and sewer lines
in Pearlington where only about 500 houselhold are left, and now $600,00,00 in “bathrooms>” Two of these
scenarios involve Compton Engineering (Pearllington
and the “Beachfront Potties. It’ll be interesting to
see if Compton bids on any work on the now close to
$3mil in renovations at Bay Tech. The final no. on the work is supposed to be presented to the School
Board in April. You couldn’t make this up!
The best quote was in the Sun-Herald this morning when
Goldie Locks (aka. President of the Board of Supervisors) said that they will seek ownership of the property now that they have this project started.
Been nice if they had sought who the owner was ahead of time, but I forget we are in Hancock County where
almost all of the legal counsel for public boards is
given by one law firm. Pattern of behavior, do you think?
Before I close, residents just down the beach from the Potties last week made the Supers tear down a
bicycle parking foundation on their land. So, there
is another case of just doing whatever you want wherever you want.
The voters in Hancock County need to get these officials and their lawyer “Potty Trained.”
You make many valid points. I personally do not see the point in having public beach access without accommodations beyond those nasty port a potties. When there was commercial development at the intersection the dynamics involving the parking lot were different.
The way the whole situation is being handled raises questions. When the old town marina was located at its present construction site a policy decision was made to concentrate commercial development on the Main Street side of old town.
There is more here than meets the eye.
Inquiring minds might want to know the complete list of consultants and planners involved.
The real problem here for other citizens, businesses,
or anyone is that in Bay St. Louis (and maybe the state) is that anybody can appear at a permit office,
and receive a permit to build without even having to
prove they own the parcel, or have written permission
from the owner to build on it. That is mind boggling.
Wonder who signed off on the permit?!
So the so-called “conservative” local political directorates aka “local government” in Mississippi rival their land grabbing socialist counterparts in the Old Continent? Who would have thought? Of course we have it the other way around in many of our Louisiana directorates where the public builds on private property in a way of crony improvement to the politically connected. This, of course, is simply another way the State redistributes wealth and the taxsheeple get it in the you-know-what.
Look up cocky, arrogant, Napoleonic. Short Man Syndrome in the dictionary and you will see a picture of little Ronnie Artigues smiling back at you. He’s a joke and needs to go. And what’s with Hancock Parish not being able to cut a blade of grass or patch one pothole without Compton Engineering billing some hours? Professional Service contracts are supposed to be reviewed every 2 years and not automatically renewed.