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Regular Council Meeting April 27, 2015 Page 6 Ken Kohls said he lived at 3935 Brandyn Place in Morningside, so he was directly affected by this procedure that came about. He said last month he complimented the City Manager on his admitting that the City staff made a mistake in issuing a building permit and also asked him informally for an explanation is to how this happened and the process to ensure it doesn't happen again. Mr. Kohls said two weeks ago he asked the Council to formally created a committee because the City staff failed in its assignments, and the lack of management supervision in issuing this building permit to Tri -State Company. He also said this lack of staff coordination and lack of supervision caused a great embarrassment to the City and there is a potential for financial loss. According to The Paris News, Mr. Kohls said that Mr. Godwin informed the Council on the situation and the corrective action, but the citizens still have not heard any of this and that is why he was at the meeting. Mr. Kohls said the citizens wanted to know what happened, how this occurred. He asked Council Members, as business owners how they would feel if they came to the City and were issued a permit to enlarge their building or relocate it, started construction and a week later the City stopped them. Mr. Kohls said this situation was one that embarrassed the City and could cause great financial harm. He said he would like to learn the staff process on how this was handled and at what level it was approved. He said according Mr. Godwin's memorandum, the zoning error by City staff was based on an incomplete knowledge of the City zoning ordinance, but yet it still was approved by the City staff and was not allowed to go to Planning and Zoning or City Council. He said he wanted to know who made those decisions and how it happened. Mayor Frierson told Mr. Kohls his comments were well taken and said they were all human, all fallible, and Mr. Godwin had explained it. He also said it was an unfortunate situation but hopefully their trust was in Mr. Godwin to make sure that his staff was well educated and trained. Mayor Frierson said he did not think there was any one person that was perfect and had not ever made a mistake. Mr. Kohls said he understood that, but still had not heard an explanation of management or who made the decision. Mr. Godwin said the names of the people that made that decision were in his memo. He said if Mr. Kohl's issue was that he was not over there watching every decision staff made, then that was on him. Mr. Godwin said he had 327 employees, and he could not watch what all 327 were doing all day long. Mr. Godwin said staff made a mistake, the names are in the memo, the council members have been given those names and he preferred not to fuss at people at a public meeting. Mr. Godwin said ultimately he took responsibility, because they worked for him and he should have been paying more attention. He said the building official had issued several hundred permits since he had been in Paris and he did not ever see any of those, because it was not his job. Mr. Kohls said he understood that, but someone needed to make sure the information was correct. Mr. Godwin said he agreed mistakes were clearly made. He said he felt very confident that those people would never ever make that mistake again. He said he was not finished with them yet, but he did not want to talk about it in a public meeting, because even the ones that made mistakes were important to the City. Mr. Kohls said they were looking for information as to how it all happened. Council Member Plata said Mr. Godwin sent City Council the ordinance that staff had reviewed prior to making a decision. He said anybody that read that ordinance could see that this fit under commercial. Council Member Plata said Mr. Godwin took it upon himself to take responsibility.