The day after the November 17 Enterprise Operations Committee meeting, Airport Director Frank Miller and Asst. City Manager Robert Payne focused on how to discredit Jim Cronley who spoke out against the Airport Hotel Lease.
From: Frank Miller
Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2008 3:35 PM
To: Robert Payne
Subject: Jim Cronley Comments
I reviewed the tape of the December 10, 2007, committee meeting and Jim Cronley is not on it.
From: Robert Payne
Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2008 4:21 PM
To: Frank Miller
Subject: RE: Jim Cronley Comments
Can you find out which meeting he did make his comments?
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The day before – the day of the committee meeting – the Pensacola City Council received a letter from Julian MacQueen objecting to request by Cobbletel (of which Jim Cronley is a stakeholder) to delay a vote on the Airport Hotel Lease. In that letter, MacQueen questions the motives of Cronley and his partners, who had objected two years earlier to hotel feasibility study at airport:
“It is clear to me that Cobbletel is clearly motivated to stop any development at the airport and prevent any competition for area hotels. It is also clear to me that, having failed to prevent the City from exploring the potential development of a hotel and having failed to prevent the City fron entering into exclusive negotiations with Innisfree, Cobbletel now directs their efforts to derail the development by attacking the lease terms themselves”
He concludes his letter with “given that the process has been transparent and the City has encouraged the process over the last two years, it would be a ‘travesty’ to use Mr. Cronley and Mr. Cleveland’s words, to reverse or delay this project based on the competition’s protectionist approach to free enterprise.”
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Payne and Miller seem to be more interested in defending the deal–and discrediting Cronley- than listening to whether Cronley, Dave Cleveland and others had any merit in their objections.
Only Sam Hall, Ronald Townsend and Mike Wiggins voted against the hotel lease at the Nov. 20 regular meeting. A year earlier, Sam Hall and Jewel Cannada-Wynn had voted against the exclusivity agreement.