Editor’s word: Following is a press release from Covington lawyer Phil Johnson outlining the sequence of occasions concerned within the sale of land in Newton County to a non-revenue corporation with plans to develop a mosque and cemetery.
“I used to be not current on the Tuesday night time BOC assembly however I used to be knowledgeable of a collection of questions John Douglas requested Lloyd Kerr concerning the mosque property. One of the questions was when Lloyd had turn into conscious that the Avery Community Church, Cemetery and School turned greater than that. Lloyd’s reply was that he had discovered one week in the past. That leaves the clear implication that first there was misinformation provided by me (since John Douglas had particularly used my identify) and that Lloyd had solely been disabused of that misinformation one week in the past. Giving Lloyd the good thing about the doubt that certainly he didn’t know the character of the appliance for the AUP which was submitted in June of 2015 since he was not personally current at both of the 2 conferences I had with the Department of Development Services at the moment, the troublesome facet of the change is that it seemed that the division was misled, which is blatantly inaccurate.
“To clear up any confusion which exists as to the sequence of occasions, I’ve put collectively the next info from my notes and communication:
“1) I’ve represented the Neely Family for almost 25 years, first representing Ted Neely and since his passing his household and its possession entities; and
“2) In early 2015, the Neely household requested me to grow to be concerned in negotiating an actual property gross sales contract with a business actual property agent named Al Taf of the Atlanta actual property brokerage firm of Marcus and Millichaps who had responded to an commercial on Craig’s List providing for sale a 135 acre tract situated at County Line Road and Ga Hwy 162 in Newton County, Georgia (all the time referred to us because the “Avery Tract” since Ted Neely had bought this property from the Avery household); and
“three) I proceeded to barter with Mr. Taf who knowledgeable me he represented a corporation whose administrators have been professionals and enterprise males in Atlanta of East Asian (Indian) descent of the Muslim religion who have been in search of a website to find a cemetery; and
“four) The purchaser was represented by an previous Atlanta lawyer who I had labored with a number of occasions over the past thirty-5 years in business actual property transactions; and
“5) The purchaser made a full worth money supply and the supply was decreased to a gross sales contract dated March 13, 2015 which was accepted by the Seller and the Purchaser; and
“6) At the request of the Neely Family I checked the identify of the corporation which might be the Purchaser with the Georgia Secretary of State’s data and located the corporation in good standing with officers and registered agent from north Atlanta; and
“7) The contract offered that the sale was contingent on the approval of using the property as a cemetery, physique preparation facility and a church by the suitable officers of Newton County Department of Development Services pursuant to a conceptual plan to be offered by the purchaser; and
“eight) I contacted the Newton County Department of Development Services to determine the Newton County necessities for a home of worship, cemetery and church affiliated faculty, and was offered a “Checklist for Establishing or Expanding a Place of Worship” ; and
“9) The first paragraph of the checklist (Section 105 Definitions) defines Place of Worship as “A lot or building wherein persons assemble for religious worship. It goes on to state that “the term shall also include any of the following: cathedral, chapel, church, synagogue, temple, mosque, tabernacle and other similar terms.”; and
“10) Section 510-480 as famous on the guidelines provides the location have to be a minimal of four.zero acres and listing accent makes use of permitted together with a cemetery; and
“11) I scheduled a gathering with the Department of Development Services and went over the necessities of the guidelines and the relevant code sections together with Section 510-150 relating to cemeteries which provides that the cemetery website shall be a minimal of 10 acres; and
“12) Based upon the relevant necessities of the ordinance and the guidelines and the necessities of the contract that a survey be obtained by the Purchaser, the Purchaser engaged an engineering agency to survey the property and to acquire from knowledgeable land use planner a conceptual plan reflecting the anticipated use of the property ( a replica of which conceptual plan is hooked up hereto); and
“13) With the finished survey and the conceptual plan, the vendor, as proprietor of the property, submitted A Petition for Administrative Use Permit for the House of Worship and the Cemetery, that are phrases of artwork in that they tract the precise language of the County ordinance and the guidelines earlier offered by the Department of Development Services ( a replica of which Petition for Administrative Use Permit is hooked up hereto); and
“14) I personally delivered the Petition for Administrative Use Permit to the Department of Development Services and mentioned the accent use to the cemetery to make sure that a burial preparation facility as famous on the conceptual plan was the truth is permitted underneath the use. We particularly mentioned the truth that no embalming would happen within the burial preparation facility due to the customs and practices of the Islamic religion, which didn’t present for embalming of the deceased”; and
“15) The unique Administrative Use Permit Case quantity AUP15-000235 (a replica of which is hooked up hereto) dated June 10, 2015, was emailed to me and I forwarded the identical to the agent for the purchaser; and
16) I acquired feedback again from the agent for the purchaser which I then forwarded within the type of an e-mail with requests for modifications or clarifications to the Department of Development Services at 6:50 pm on 6/15/2015 ( a replica of the e-mail is hooked up hereto with the addressee on the Department of Development Services redacted); and
“17) Attached to the e-mail to the Department of Development Services was a replica of Form Letter 947 from the Internal Revenue Service to AL MADD AL ISLAMI INC. confirming their tax exempt standing underneath Section 501(c)(three) of the Internal Revenue Code with a request that the AUP be issued to AL MADD AL ISLAMI INC because the purchaser of the property; and
“18) On June 16, 2015, a revised AUP15-000235 was issued to AL MADD AL ISLAMI INC. Aka Avery Community Church with the opposite requested clarification on the cemetery and the burial preparation facility by the Department of Development Services; and
“19) On Aug. 26, 2015, the sale of the 135.168 acres by closed on behalf of the purchaser by Talley & Associates of Conyers, Georgia; and
“20) Finally, although it’s considerably irrelevant, the gross sales worth which was quoted within the paper as $1.3Million was grossly inaccurate. The property was initially cut up into two parcels for tax functions – unsure why, however they have been 0050-00000-001-00zero and 0050-00000-001-B00. The PT-61 type 107-2015-002897 for Warranty Deed recorded at Deed Book 3358, Page 122, public data of Newton County, Georgia exhibits the entire consideration for the property to be $675,900 for each parcels. When the Newton Citizen reporter, Alice Queen, checked this she apparently noticed on the tax assessors gross sales exercise for every parcel a sale for $675,900, however she didn’t verify to see that they have been on the identical guarantee.
“The solely significance of merchandise 20 is to point out that wrong, poorly researched and little understood gadgets reported are taken because the gospel and repeated all through the dialogue on social media.
“Far extra necessary on this dialogue is the inference by Lloyd that the Department of Development Services was misled, and that they solely discovered of the details inside the final week. The AUP was truly issued to AL MADD AL ISLAMI INC when corrected by my e-mail to the Department of Development Services to make sure that they issued within the right identify. The division was absolutely knowledgeable as to the religion of the church and people to be buried within the cemetery, in addition to the character of the burial course of based on the customs and practices of the Islamic religion.
“While, as I famous above, Lloyd might not have had private information of the details, he clearly might have reviewed the file, and found all the things famous above. His reply to John’s apparent arrange query to indict me for misrepresentation acquiesced in John’s mischief and grandstanding. What is baffling is why Lloyd participated on this charade.
“The fact of the matter is that the Department of Development Services might have taken no different motion than the approval of the Administrative Use Permit underneath its personal ordinance which clearly provides that the time period House of Worship in its code consists of each conceivable spiritual home of worship in its definition together with particularly a mosque.
“And the language within the Newton County Ordinance shouldn’t be there accidentally. If the equal safety clause of the United States Constitution weren’t clear sufficient on the purpose, the provisions of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 is, and the act just isn’t one handed by a liberal left. It was launched by Senator Warren Hatch of Utah, a reasonably nicely credentialed conservative, and handed each homes of Congress unanimously.
“So it might seem that the extra trustworthy strategy for Lloyd in his reply, and John and the opposite members of the BOC of their subsequent actions, would have been to inform the attendees on the Tuesday night time assembly of the BOC that the right motion had been taken as a result of it was the law. If the BOC needs to make it extra onerous to acquire a allow for a church sooner or later they will achieve this however solely with the understanding that it’ll apply to the Baptist and the Methodist in addition to the Islamic and Hindu homes of worship.
“Intellectual dishonesty, disingenuous feedback to play to the bias of a portion of the general public and gross misrepresentation of the details clearly aren’t robust attributes of management. The suggestion that it’s OK to deduce some potential totally different consequence by a 5-week moratorium in order that the general public will overlook, or as has been stated, to let some air get out of the balloon, is so cynical in its view of the general public and the duty of management as to be offensive
“Finally, the feedback which recommend the Neely household did something despicable by promoting their land to a prepared purchaser at an inexpensive worth for a use particularly permitted beneath the Newton County Ordinances is ridiculous. I keep in mind two years in the past many people, together with many now attacking the Neely household, joined to struggle towards what we felt an unreasonable infringement of the best of a property proprietor to regulate his personal property through the 2050 Plan dialogue. Do rules imply nothing? Is it really a matter of whose ox is the one getting gored?
“For the chairman of the Newton County Board of Commissioners to say in a remark to the Newton Citizen concerning the sale by the Neely household that cash talks is way under the dignity of the workplace, however that has by no means stopped Keith earlier than.
“The actions of the chair, the BOC nor the county supervisor over this matter might hardly be described as examples of profiles in braveness.”
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