Finally got around to posting a number of meeting minutes for the Feoffees and School Committee that were extracted from the Probate Court records. They are in new categories. Email updates were turned off temporarily so that followers would not get dozens of emails. A couple favorites are this one from the Feoffees and this one from the School Committee.
Was settlement the only way to extract the Feoffees?
At the now infamous January 5, 2012 School Committee meeting, Chairman Loeb made two main representations to the public.
The first was that the Probate Court judge had made clear to School Committee counsel that she saw no reason why she shouldn’t order a sale, that the only question in her mind was the price and that as a result she pressured the parties to have discussions about settling the case. This public representation, which the citizen interveners relied upon as fact when spending their own personal resources filing their appeal, was later refuted by the School Committee’s own counsel at the appeal hearing.
The second representation was that the judge felt that if there was a sale there was no reason to change governance. This was reported to have been a determining factor in at least Laura Dietz’s decision to support the sale. This leads one to wonder if the School Committee’s counsel had provided the School Committee with this motion, filed by the Feoffees in Probate Court, which states in part “in the event this court grants the relief sought by the Plaintiffs in their complaint and permits the sale of Little Neck…the Plaintiffs will have no objection to the endowment fund, to be created from the sales proceeds, being managed by persons other than the present life feoffees.” In other words, the risk of an ordered sale leading to a cash endowment being managed by the current feoffees (an admittedly scary prospect) was not real.
Which leaves us eager to hear from the Chairman Loeb and members Dietz, O’Flynn & Gresh what the true urgency really was for settling the case and selling Little Neck before all the evidence was heard. Maybe we will hear at Town Meeting.
Little Neck restrictions postponed
Ipswich Chronicle article.
Feoffees move to expand Little Neck use in Ipswich
Ipswich Chronicle article.
The Feoffees, as always, putting the interests of the tenants above those of the beneficiaries.
Little Neck tenants fight seasonal restrictions in Ipswich
Ipswich Chronicle article.
Ipswich Town Meeting to decide pressing Little Neck battle
Ipswich Chronicle Letter to the editor by Clark Ziegler.
Feoffees Annual Meeting
The location of this event has apparently also changed. It appears that it will now be held at 5:30PM on Monday, March 26th at the Ascension Memorial Church Hall, 31 County Street.
Latest Trust Administration Order
This is apparently the most recent version of the Trust Administration Order, the document that would control the operation of the Feoffees going forward if the Probate Court Judgment is upheld.
Probate – SC – 120323 – Trust Administration Order
It makes clearer (in 5c & d) that the $2.4M in back rent will not be considered part of the Trust assets for purposes of defining what used to be called the “Historical Value” and is now called the “Principal” of the Trust. Put another way, as far as future generations are concerned, this is the same deal that the School Committee turned down in October of 2010. Future income can therefore be fairly calculated on the same net of approximately $22M that we have used in our financial analysis all along, and that was used by the School Committee in this part of their Summary Judgment Opposition to calculate an annual return of $110,000. We believe this was overly pessimistic and that the number will likely be more like $350,000, but in any case there is no reason to believe that the income will be sufficient to offset the additional costs of a year-round Little Neck, let alone fund any “enhancements” to the schools.
Judge upholds Little Neck sale
Ipswich Chronicle article.
To be clear, the only matter before this judge was our motion to stay (delay) the sale while the appeal proceeds. The appeal itself has not been heard, nor could it be in the 15 minutes that we were given to present this motion.
The Art of Stealing from the Rich and Dead
Many of the comments on the national press stories have referenced a recent case involving the Barnes art collection that has a lot of parallels. You can find a lot of coverage of the story on line. Here is just one example.
Ipswich Citizens for Public Trust 