Manchester Times Interview of Alderman Ryan P. French

Manchester Times Interview of Alderman Ryan P. French

In the Wednesday 2/1/2012 edition of the Manchester Times there will be an article titled “Kohl’s Developer: City officials good to work with”. For this article Editor Josh Peterson requested an interview of Alderman Ryan French.

“This interview was done in a written format so there would be no room for misrepresentation of my opinion, as this has been my policy when doing interviews since being elected to the Board of Alderman. The full interview will hopefully help identify what the real issues are regarding the Kohl’s situation and how we fix them moving forward.

From the beginning I have highlighted a problem that is within the inner workings of the Board of Mayor and Alderman. The lack of communication and participation of a select few individuals continue to cloud the goals of the City. The constant politicizing of issues has continued to overshadow our procedural flaws and allowed them to worsen over the years.

The facts of a $32,000 project vs. a $35,000 project simply have nothing to do with the true issue at hand. It is time for members our board as the elected representatives of this city to own our responsibilities the citizens and work towards correcting the legislative procedure of which future developments will be handled. The excuses and avoiding of responsibilities these officials are sworn to uphold is absolutely ridiculous and needs to stop immediately. ”

-Alderman Ryan P. French

RyansReasons.com

Josh Peterson (Manchester Times): The city attorney opined that the city couldn't move the controversial sewer line legally. Do you not agree with the city attorney? Or are you suggesting this line should have been moved regardless?

Alderman Ryan French: The line could not be moved based on the theory that it would be improving an individual’s property. As I stated in my letter the definition of a property improvement is subjective, and simply put, yes the line should have been moved be it for Kohl’s or any other business looking to develop the site. For example Murfreesboro did extensive work on medical center parkway including laying new lines, moving old lines, and adjusting other infrastructure. The $300,000 incentive package offer came only after Kohl’s cut the $300,000 from their development budget for the site. When the initial request was made to move the sewer line the answer was simply no.

Josh Peterson (Manchester Times): What do you think the city should have done to expedite this process as you suggest that no one took this seriously? Give me some examples? How was the process not taken seriously?

Alderman Ryan French: When I was elected in 2009 I suggested that the city move towards the development an Economic Affairs Committee that would oversee communications between our committees within the city and external entities such as the Chamber of Commerce and private developers. It was never seriously entertained. The process in which this particular proposal was handled was at best inefficient. For example: the BOMA should have known very well that the water and street departments would not be able to absorb an additional project of this size, so why make request of these departments for the additional cost in the first place. Furthermore why was the response of these departments the deciding factor? In the water committee meeting Alderman Norman suggested that the funding mechanism may have to come from the general fund due to the fact the water department simply could not work the additional cost into their budget. This was NEVER put on the agenda and never voted on by the full board, despite the general consensus that it could not be funded at the committee level.

Josh Peterson (Manchester Times): The "gentleman's agreement" the city supposidly didn't hold up. 25 years ago with the Roberts' family. ... The article states the sewer line was laid some 25 years ago with a gentleman's agreement tha the city would move the line if ever needed for commercial development...

Well, the sewer line was laid in 1970-1971 according to easements at the deeds office. This is far from 25 years ago - about 41 to be exact. The Roberts did not own the land at that time according to deeds. The Roberts bought the two parcels in 1978 and 1993, respectively. what gentleman's agreement are we talking about?

Alderman Ryan French: I have never mentioned a gentlemen's agreement and I’m not sure about the particulars of this case. However as a general practice I think it would be good business for the city to respect property owners when it comes to easements. The time frame and who the easement was obtained from and when it was obtained simply has no bearing on the end result of this process.

Josh Peterson (Manchester Times): Once again, this question may not necessarily pertain to you as you didn't write the article, but the Kohl's Divide suggests John Roberts said the sewer project would cost $32,000. Is that the number you understand? Because that is not the number in the minutes.

Alderman Ryan French: I believe the number was $35,000 but again this is simply not the problem. The problem lies within the process used to handle the situation, and the lack of participation outside the few Alderman and Mayor.

Josh Peterson (Manchester Times): I got in contact with the president of Realtylink, which is doing business for Kohl's. He send me a response that reads in part: "I can comment that the Manchester market is an underserved retail market and I do expect further retail development in the near future in Manchester. I would also like to say the City of Manchester and their various elected officials such as the Mayor, City Council, Planning and Permitting have been very good to work with and very encouraging towards retail development. I have not experience anything in regards to Manchester other than a great place to do business, Neil Wilson

Mr. Wilson seems to think Manchester was good to work with? Are you suggesting he is not telling the truth? Or that Manchester could have done better?

Alderman Ryan French: Any good business person always wants to leave the door open for future development and I certainly would be willing to talk to this gentleman about any number of things. The facts are we are talking about internal issues and how the process is executed from start to finish. We simply do not have alderman willing to put the work in, and make our part time job full time commitments. It takes a lot of time for a person to serve the best interests of any city, of any size and do it well. At the end of the day that store could have been open in September had we followed a proper process. I have been clear from the beginning, I have had open dialog with my constituents and colleagues Alderman Norman, Alderman Parsley, and Mayor Superstein. My feelings about this process or lack thereof should not come as news to anyone involved.

Kohl's Divide: French calls Mayor’s response to Kohl’s flop an ‘excuse’

Written by Chip Ramsey | 22 January 2012

When plans for a proposed Kohl’s department store
in Manchester were scuttled last month, the firestorm
over who dropped the ball on the deal erupted into a
politically-charged debate that is still smoldering.
According to developers who brought Kohl’s to the
table, city officials, including Mayor Betty Superstein
and Manchester Water and Sewer Director Bryan
Pennington were not cooperative early on in process.
In an email sent from the mayor to a representative
of the Roberts family which owned the property destined
for the retail giant, developers were told that the
city couldn’t make the numbers work” on a request to
move a city-owned sewer line off of the middle of the
site. Cost: $32,000.

The site is located on Hillsboro Boulevard in front of
Home Depot, and the Kohl’s store, along with at least
five other retail chains would have been built there generating
millions of dollars in sales tax revenue over their
lifespan.

The sewer line originally had been laid across the
Roberts’ property some 25 years ago when the family
gave the City of Manchester a free easement – with a
“gentleman’s agreement” that the city would move the
line if the property was ever developed. But when the
request was made for the city to holds its end of the
agreement up, roadblocks to the process added
months of delays to the development which Kohl’s
eventually canned on Dec. 6, 2011.
The company’s public statement was that their
future sales projections no longer warranted a store in
Manchester.

However, had the initial request to move the sewer
line been honored early on, the building would have
been in operation by September of 2011 – two months
before the bad sales forecast.

According to developers, the mayor and some board
members only joined the effort to land Kohl’s once a
third-party developer from South Carolina was brought
in by the Roberts family to negotiate with the city. This
was long into the process, according to developers and Alderman Ryan French.

After The Saturday Independent’s Dec. 17,
2011 editorial, “Kohl’s debacle was a bad political
lesson” was published criticizing the board’s early
foot-dragging, Alderman Donnie Thomas, in a
fist-pounding show of bravado at a publically-televised
board meeting, demand the paper give an
apology for the “lies they told on us [the board].”
The paper stood by its editorial and the following
week, Mayor Superstein ordered City Attorney
Gerald Ewell to create a timeline that showed only
the city’s late-game involvement in the Kohl’s
process. The timeline was published in The
Manchester Times the next week. Superstein was
quoted in the article saying she supported Ewell’s
recollection of the process. Ewell spoke on behalf
of the board.

But Manchester Alderman Ryan French rejected
the veracity of the city’s timeline and the implication
that he agreed with its sentiments. French’s
letter to the editor explaining his side of the issue
is on page A4.

“There is a complete divide among the board
from that letter,” French told The Saturday
Independent, “and it does not need to represent
the board if that’s not what we all stand behind.
“I believe that the Board of Mayor and
Alderman spun the letter – particularly in the
Manchester TImes article – as an excuse for the
whole board,” he said. “I don’t think it was intended
to come from Ewell that way, but that’s the way
it was spun to the public.“I believe they wanted a “cloud” for the public
that the letter was a legal opinion – which it is not.
French said that the city “didn’t take it [the
Kohl’s development] that serious. “Nobody
proactively educated themselves about the particulars
of the situation.”

While it rejected the Roberts’ family’s initial
request to move the line at a cost to the city of
roughly $32,000, the board eventually offered
Kohl’s a $300,000 economic package to defray
construction costs.

French said the matter should have been dealt
with nearly two years ago, when the city was first
approached to move the sewer line at a much
cheaper price than the $300,000 package that
came to late, according to him and others
involved in the deal.

Ironically, no public notice about a special called
meeting to confirm the $300,000 package
was ever issued. State law demands that proper
and timely notices about public meetings be published
in a local newspaper. The Saturday
Independent never received such notice about
the special-called meeting which took place in
November of last year.

The Saturday Independent made three
requests for the public notice. The initial request
from the paper to the city to produce evidence of
the meeting notice was ignored. When pressed in
an email, administrative assistant to Mayor
Superstein, Amy Loyd responded: “Any further
questions regarding this meeting may be directed
to the City Attorney, Gerald Ewell, Jr.”
Ewell is not responsible for sending out public
notices. Those are usually sent to local media by
Ms. Loyd.