You didn't think I made this stuff up did you?

..

I happened on a copy of the letter from Mr. Chu to the Mayor, which was Cc’d but not timely delivered or in some cases not delivered at all to commissioners and councilmen, where he references the deal he made to the Mayor.

Notice that this letter does not bear a stamp from the Town Clerk. Is it common practice for official correspondence to NOT be stamped and recorded?

As the person from the strip club side explained Mr. Chu was unable to sign this letter before it was delivered to the Mayor, presumably by his counsel, because he was out of state on business. This is a confirmed correspondence.

Note, I have removed Mr. Chu’s phone number for obvious reasons.

While this letter may not appear to say a whole lot I’m informed the letter for legal reasons could not contain details and Mayor Currey was let in on it’s secret details. Word has it that this deal has a very short shelf life. Once either the Masters Club or Pitkin Street start their active court battle (September) the mutual benefit derived from their coming together as businessmen and settling will no longer exist.

Something that has bugged me since the last hearing was the suggestion, though I don’t recall of the top of my head if it was Dayton or Gerard who said it, that commissioners must follow the rules for ex parte communication and could not discuss the zoning application with anyone until the public hearing resumes next week. That struck me as a gag order and bad government so I looked up our ex parte ordinance.

From Section 15-13 of the ordinances:

An official, officer, or employee shall not consider any ex parte or private communications from any person, which he or she knows is or reasonably may be intended to influence unlawfully the decision on the merits of any matter where a determination is required by law to be made on the record after opportunity for hearing to interested parties.

It seems clear from the above that a communication in itself regarding the application is not a violation of the ex parte rules. In fact it seems the ex parte rules don’t preclude the commissioners from talking to anyone about the application unless they know they may be about to receive a bribe, extortion attempt, threat or some similar form of unlawful influence.