Did you know that
Mayor Mikel Virdell spent ~$20,000 to cover-up City Manager Brenton Lewis' lie?
It has been proven that Llano City Manager, Brenton
Lewis, overtly lied to the Llano Planning and Zoning Commission, lied to
the Llano City Council, and lied to Llano citizens.
He even committed aggravated perjury in a sworn affidavit to the Texas
Third Court of Appeals, which is being looked into by the Llano District
Attorney's Office.
The lie was an attempt (successful
to-date) by Brenton Lewis to
circumvent three Texas Zoning Laws - as shown by an
earlier LlanoWatch article. Brenton Lewis'
only argument was that the changes made to the zoning ordinance were
just text changes (word changes) when, in fact, they were substantive
zoning property usage changes. By claiming that they are only text
changes, they are not covered by the law. Calling it a text change was a
way to make a zoning change under the public radar. And Brenton Lewis'
argument addressed only one on the violations. As usual,
government feels that if they don't answer a complaint, it will
eventually be forgotten. LlanoWatch won't let that happen.
The cover-up of these violations by Mayor Virdell has already cost about
$20,000 of taxpayer funds to prevent the courts from hearing Brenton
Lewis' explanation. Note that he has never tried to explain. This
$20,000 was not spent to argue his position; it was spent to prevent the
argument from occurring.
All that was asked of Brenton Lewis was to answer one
simple question regarding his assertion that a zoning usage change is a
text change. One sentence. The City Attorney, Attorney General, and the
Texas Municipal League were available to help him,
A zoning usage change is a text change because
__________________.
We even answered first with the opposing position:
A zoning usage change is a regulation change because
State Statute 211.003(5) and State Statute 211.005 defines it as such.
Logic says so also.
Council has been given numerous requests at all
stages to provide the answer, but Mayor Virdell unilaterally controls the
city council agenda, even closed meetings, so the city council has not had a
vote.
Mayor Virdell was even asked directly to schedule a
debate, written or oral, to answer the question and end the legal
spending that is protecting Brenton Lewis. At first
Mayor Virdell
agreed to the debate but never responded to follow-ups on
actually having
the debate.
So, $20,000 of taxpayer money has been wasted to
protect City Manager Brenton Lewis from explaining his actions; City
Council has been rendered impotent because the Mayor controls the council meeting agenda;
and the Mayor won't agree to a citizen-Lewis debate. This is a regular
citizen with no legal experience, up against the City Attorney and City
Manager, who has 20 years of zoning administration experience. One sentence, or
a one half-hour meeting, would have ended it, yet Mayor Virdell
continues the fight to protect Brenton Lewis. Even if Brenton Lewis is
wrong, which he is, it would cost the City nothing above the cost of
doing what the law requires.
Why the big fight by Lewis and Virdell? Presumably
because the bigger, illegal, zoning change fight is looming - the
rewrite/overhaul of the entire zoning
ordinance. The real reason for this overhaul is still not fully
exposed, but it has become clear that Mayor Virdell and City Manager Lewis
want the south end of Ford Street to be changed from residential to
commercial. Neither Mayor Virdell, City Manager Lewis, nor P&Z Chair
Dianne Firestone will give a coherent reason for the need for the
change - they just march forward with the semi-secret planning. Don't look for
P&Z meetings on the City website calendar because they are not there.
What we are learning from this experience is that
Llano City Government is lawless and willing to spend any amount of citizen money
to protect itself and their agenda from the citizens of Llano.
And we cannot depend on proper action from Judge Garrett at the Llano District Court, as
we shall show in a future article and complaint to the
State Commission on Judicial Conduct
.
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