Wake County commissioner accuses board member of lying, taking credit for park plan
Wake County Commissioners Chair Jessica Holmes says fellow Commissioner Matt Calabria is lying and taking credit for a proposal to give the former Crooked Creek Golf Course property to the town of Fuquay-Varina.
In an email exchange Thursday, Holmes accused Calabria of making a false statement regarding the proposal. The county board voted to buy the 143-acre property last summer and then voted in January to try to sell it. The board will likely discuss giving the property to the town of Fuquay-Varina during its meeting Monday.
“You are either intentionally misleading the public or intentionally being inflammatory and disingenuous,” Holmes wrote in an email.
She referenced a statement Calabria posted on social media that read, in part, “On January 7 of this year, the commission voted 4-3 to declare the South Wake Park property ‘surplus,’ to immediately begin entertaining bids for the property, and to sell it to the highest bidder.”
During the January meeting the commissioners held to put the property up for sale, Holmes said the property didn’t have to go to the highest bidder and that staff should work to find partner organizations
There was never an intention to sell to the highest bidder, she wrote to Calabria, adding “you should review the recording, publicly retract this statement and apologize.”
The resolution the board approved included several points: that the board wanted to sell the property to “retire the debt associated with the purchase,” that county staff would evaluate offers and negotiate directly with potential buyers, and that the county would follow state law 160A-269.
The resolution says once an offer is accepted, it will be presented to the board and the board can reject the offer or begin the upset bid process, as outlined by state law. The state law says the county “may accept the offer and sell the property to the highest bidder” once it has gone through an upset bid process. The state law says the board may reject “any and all offers” at any time.
The board’s resolution also says the commissioners “reserve the right to withdraw the property, or any portion thereof, from sale at anytime before the final high bid is accepted.”
Calabria responded a few hours later and said the “actual resolution that commissioners passed is unambiguous.”
“Certainly various individual aspirations were articulated, though when efforts were made to slow down the process to more thoroughly consider what the board should/will do, that motion was voted down,” he said.
Efforts to reach the county attorney’s office for this story Thursday afternoon were unsuccessful.
Calabria also said he didn’t believe “this method of communicating questions or concerns is particularly appropriate or constructive.” The email from Holmes was sent to the board and reporters from The News & Observer and The Indy. A reporter at WRAL was later added in follow-up emails.
“After the long public dialogue on this issue, I would hope that a united commission can be positive and forward-looking rather than retrospective and relitigating,” Calabria wrote.
Holmes responded to his email and said she agreed “this method of communication is unfortunate and less than ideal.”
“However, communicating a falsehood to the public is even more disturbing and you tend to take the approach of deny and or lie when concerns are brought to you directly,” Holmes said.
Taking Credit
Holmes also said Calabria was not “engaged in conversations regarding the proposed solution that will be discussed on Monday.”
“[You] are only now seeming to claim credit and involvement as this best suits your narrative that you are the good guy and the rest of us are anti-park and or anti-open space,” Holmes said. “Your political maneuvering throughout this process has been divisive and counterproductive, and at times intentionally misleading to the public.”
Calabria later responded and said this should be an opportunity to “rejoice” and not “quibble over who thought of it first, who worked on it most or who wanted to preserve the land from the very beginning.”
“And it’s certainly not an opportunity to use a disagreement about what a law says as an entree into smearing commissioners who have taken other positions,” he said. “Emails seeking credit or acknowledgment are inappropriate and counterproductive, and they focus on the wrong thing. But it’s especially perverse to act as if acknowledgment is some sort of zero-sum game; just because one person worked on something doesn’t diminish someone else’s efforts. We should rise as a commission and a county. We should not seek to rise by pushing others down.”
Two 4-3 votes
The Crooked Creek property became a political football during last year’s Democratic primary for the county board when critics argued the county should not be buying future parkland when it did not give the school system all it had requested.
Calabria, Commissioner Sig Hutchinson and then Commissioners John Burns and Erv Portman voted in favor of purchasing the property. The vote came after Burns and Portman had lost their re-election bids in the primary.
Holmes, Commissioner Greg Ford and Commissioner James West voted against buying the former golf course.
Then last month, with the change in the board’s makeup, Ford proposed selling it. New Commissioner Vickie Adamson joined Ford, Holmes and West in voting to sell. New Commissioner Susan Evans joined Calabria and Hutchinson in voting no.
After facing community backlash, some commissioners may now be feeling pressured to save face and backtrack on their previous votes, Calabria said.
“As part of this process, commissioners may feel that they have to privately or publicly reconcile what they have previously said or done with this new proposal. Given the overwhelming public feedback, some may feel as though they need to show how they were really for a park all along.”
Commissioners will meet on Monday and details of the proposal to give the 143-acre property to the town of Fuquay-Varina at no cost will likely be released Friday. The board paid about $4 million for the property.
This story was originally published February 14, 2019 at 12:40 PM.
