Wow, what an evening.  If this had been on Pay-Per-View we could have raised enough money to wipe out Greece’s national debt.

Allen Cox was there of course, as was Daphne Council President Gus Palumbo, members of the POA and around 100 residents of TimberCreek.  Also present in the room were Daphne Councilwoman Cathy Barnett who was the proposer of the motion to deny the subdivision and Ed Kirby, the Planning Commission Chairman who is in favor of the service road and was absent when the vote to deny the subdivision was taken.  I didn’t see any of the Baldwin County Commissioners or any other officials but I may have been mistaken.

Mr. Cox opened by telling us that he wanted this to be a friendly discussion as though we were all sat in a living room in someone’s house.    This was a little hard to imagine when he was stood on a stage with a podium and microphone and the 100 good folks of TimberCreek were dispersed around a room big enough to hold 17 times that number. 

His objective for the meeting?  To tell the truth.

I’ll post more later when I get chance to put my notes in order but here is a quick summary of “A Fireside Chat With Allen Cox”

According to Cox:

• The Magnolia 9 conservation easement should be concluded in January 2011
• The lack of communication and confusion over the “alleged” commercial development was due to the owners not being in the day to day property business – it had all taken place while he, Mr. Cox, was out of town.
• TimberCreek Property Company doesn’t care about the service road – in fact it was Baldwin County who came to them to help build it.
• Daphne City Council voted unanimously (6-0) in favor of the Service Road. (Feb 2006)
• The option for the hospital came after the service road proposal.
• TimberCreek Property Co. now has 3 options for the vacant 147 acres to the West of TimberCreek:  Sell the remaining 147 acres to Cypress (Bass Pro), complete the original plans for TimberCreek (around 300 more units) or revisit the service road.

Council President Gus Palumbo rebutted with:

• It was TimberCreek Land Co that initiated the service road project.
• The Daphne vote was actually 6-1 and his was the only vote against.  (Mr. Cox read from a Baldwin Register article from the time which says it was 6-0)
• A Quote from an email from David Ed Bishop that the Baldwin Commission was asked by TimberCreek Land Co to facilitate the service road.   (Mr. Cox called Mr. Bishop “a liar”)

During this exchange Palumbo commented that you can't belieive everything that you read in a paper to whic h Cox responded "or out of the mouth of a politician"  Some wag in the audience beat me by about a thousandth of a second with "or from a property developer"

With the floodgates well and truly open the rest of the audience joined in with their searching questions, the majority of which did not receive satisfactory answers, including one from your blog writer when I asked how could the North American Land Trust ratify the conservation easement for Magnolia 9 when the sale was effectively illegal due to Daphne Planning Commission denying the subdivision?

Oh yes, and with that subject in mind, apparently TimberCreek Land Co are suing Daphne City over the decision.  

When I moved here from England via a 13 year stint in the Middle East I thought I was coming to a nice peaceful neighborhood where I could restart my life with my new American bride.  Boy was I wrong – it’s never dull around here is it?