An Open Letter to Jason Burnett, City Council Member

Your position on Flanders Mansion articulated in The Carmel Pine Cone (6 January 2012) (see below) is consistent with your comments at your Town Hall meeting on the morning of Monday, 9 January 2012 and inconsistent with your Letter to the Editor (13 January 2012) and your website posting My Position Regarding Flanders by Jason Burnett on January 13, 2012 - 12:04pm. It appears then that you changed your mind between Monday morning (Town Hall Meeting) and Monday afternoon (Council Closed Session), five days after the Court published its opinion. The public deserves to know what transpired to make you change your position and make the motion to have the Appellate Court reconsider their decision. In addition, what is your position if the City loses the "reconsideration?"

Appeals court clears way for Flanders sale
- But Burnett says it should be leased instead By MARY SCHLEY
Published: January 6, 2012

But councilman Jason Burnett, the frontrunner to be Carmel’s next mayor, said even a relatively minor update to the EIR will be too time consuming and costly, with no assured outcome. Despite years of unanimous decisions by the city council to sell the historic home and a 2009 public vote overwhelmingly in favor of the sale, he said the ruling by the Sixth Appellate District provides an opportunity for the city to abandon its plan to sell the mansion and put it up for longterm lease as a single-family home instead.

“It’s disappointing that we can’t find a resolution to this controversy,” Burnett said. “I think most people are hoping we can put this behind us, and the court decision underscores the logic in approaching that by turning it into single-family residence by some other means.”

Leasing it to someone who would restore and maintain it, whether a family or a curator, could probably “be accomplished without any legal fight,” he said.


Billig and her attorney, Susan Brandt-Hawley, took the appellate court’s decision as a triumph.

“The foundation is pleased and gratified that Judge Kingsley’s ruling was upheld,” Billig said in a statement. “This is a good time for all of us to take another look at Flanders and the park as a whole and to think creatively about working together for a lasting solution for Flanders Mansion and the people of Carmel-by-the-Sea.”

Burnett said he feels similarly, regarding the mansion’s fate.

“The problem is that this could go on forever: You fix one problem and then come back and find some other problem,” he said.

Amending the EIR would be costly and would require circulating it for additional comments that could raise additional environmental concerns. The economic feasibility study would also have to be revised, “and we don’t know what the results would be,” he said.

Holding another public vote would be expensive, too.

“I see the main objective as getting out from under this asset that is costing taxpayers money rather than earning something for taxpayers,” he said. “During a longterm lease, for example, we could probably get close to the amount of money as we would in a sale, but that would depend on what the market will bear.”

He speculated someone would be interested in taking on the costs of restoring the historic home in exchange for the enjoyment of living in it for many years.

CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JASON BURNETT'S RESPONSE:

The position I had as a candidate for City Council and as a member of the City Council has been that my job is to work to implement the will of the people as expressed in the Measure I vote. I agree with you that this was not clear in the first Pine Cone article but I made this point at my Town Hall meeting and later in my letter to the editor.

When I had my Town Hall meeting I said that I did not yet have the benefit of the legal analysis of our lawyers and therefore my thinking was preliminary (I always try to make this point because I try to keep an open mind until I have heard all the facts and all the points of view). While I cannot get into the details of the Closed Session meeting (legally we are not permitted to do so), I can say that we talked with our lawyers and I reached the conclusion that reconsideration is the shortest path forward that is consistent with my long-held position that I should work to implement the outcome of Measure I. That is the reason I made the motion.

I don't want to speculate at this point about what might happen if the City were to lose the reconsideration.

Does this make sense?


CONSTITUENT'S REPLY:

No, the cognitive dissonance is too great for it to make any sense.

As to your statement, “I don't want to speculate at this point about what might happen if the City were to lose the reconsideration:” The overarching problem with our city government’s process of selling Flanders Mansion has been Mayor Sue McCloud’s and City Councils’ failure to satisfactorily think through the consequences of their actions. As a result, to date, $1,047,319.39 in taxpayer monies has been expended needlessly and unwisely.

P.S. If the mayor and city council had the vision in 2000 to sign a lease with the Flanders Foundation, the Flanders Mansion would be rehabilitated today and the National Register of Historic Places building would be an asset to Mission Trail Nature Preserve and enhance the experience of public park users.