In Parts One and Two, the subject of controversial
Certificate of Occupancy issues in several of the downtown businesses was
introduced. I shared some of the mystery
and subterfuge regarding some of the businesses operating in the Q Office
Suites and Art Center
Building…A’Vouloir Apothecary, Wylie
Art Gallery,
and Keller Williams. What is still not
understood, is WHY the Mayor, City Manager, Assistant City Manager, some other
City Officials, Lynn Grimes of the Wylie Art Gallery & Keller Williams and
others in the Q building collectively created such webs of deceit for the
purpose of causing Dwight’s job loss and to close down The Crafter’s Co-op. As I shared in Part Two, Dwight first became
aware of the February 12th Special
Called Meeting when the ACM came into his office placing him on
Administrative Leave 4:00 p.m. February
14th. He informed Dwight he
had already started investigations into the serious accusations Lynn Grimes claimed
to be true.
During the duration that The Crafter’s Co-op was open, the
Mayor made two visits into the shop. His
first brief visit was not long after the shop opened for business. The next visit was made February 13th,
the day AFTER the Special Called
Meeting. His stated reason was he “wanted to stop and say ‘hello’
on his way to see Lynn at the
gallery”. I was really surprised to see
him as I had seen him countless times going into the gallery during the 17
months the shop was in business and he never felt the need to “favor” me with
his presence those times. He was very
gregarious, acting like my new BFF and said that he wanted to make sure that Dwight
and I came to the “State of the City” Chamber of Commerce Luncheon to hear his
speech as he was going to talk about all Dwight had done again to help retain
Wylie’s ISO-1 rating and he even planned to mention the shop when he talked
about Wylie’s downtown. We had an
article coming out in The Connection that very day about Robyn B., one of the
crafters and her ministry “Faith Like a
Mustard Seed”. I told him if he did
talk of the shop, to please tell them about the 98 awesome artists and crafters
and 28 ministries represented in the shop.
He left and went next door smiling that “I LOVE WYLIE” smile. I had no idea what he had just done… painting
me a huge rainbow BEFORE the biggest
storm in our life was to begin. Why was our Mayor so incredibly
deceitful? Did he want me to think he
knew nothing of what he and Lynn had done and the plans of their meeting the
very night before? Did he want to make
me think that he was on our side for the fateful meeting he was planning to set
us up for the following Monday, February 18th? These are questions that still make no sense
to us. But of course, the duplicity of
people never does make sense.
As I shared in Part Two, it was not until 4 p.m. on the 14th
that I was first aware of anything amiss when my landlord’s son came into the
shop very upset demanding Dwight’s private numbers. And I later found out that at that exact time,
the ACM was in Dwight’s office placing
him on Administrative Leave. It was that
evening during our Valentine dinner that Dwight told me he had been placed on
leave and the few details that he knew
of the accusations and the investigation.
We stayed up all night trying to make sense of what had happened and believed
there was no other choice other than to close the shop. Since The Crafter’s Co-op was a ministry that
Dwight helped me fund, there was no way that I could fund the shop without some
financial help that Dwight’s job had afforded me. In the meeting with the ACM, he had NOT given
Dwight encouragement for a positive outcome and the options he gave Dwight that
afternoon painted a bleak future. To stay
in the shop, meant that we would be spending money we would need for our living
expenses as our income was going to be reduced by 80 per cent. I also had more than seven months left on my
lease and it was clear that Lynn Grimes would never give up until the doors of
The Crafter’s Co-op were closed for good.
Friday, the 15th after a long night of crying,
talking, and planning, we decided to go to breakfast before going to bed. We put a sign up at the shop to let everyone
know that the shop was closed until further notice. We then went to Taste of Home for a late
breakfast. We parked in the front,
curbside on Ballard Street. When we left, Dwight opened my door and
walked around opening the driver side door.
I immediately heard an engine roar and the screeching of tires as a car
came to a fast stop and the driver had used a police type “tactical block”
nosed in where we could not move our car without backing up. Dwight turned and leaned over into the
passenger side window of the “blocking” car.
Minutes later, Dwight got into the car and said “Well that was no
accident”. He then told me that it had
been the Mayor and he set a meeting up for both of us to come to his “office
outside of town, so we would not be seen”.
Dwight said the Mayor acted as if we would be able to “put this to rest”
on Monday, February 18th.
Saturday evening, February 16th, I sent an email
out to all the artists and crafters telling them we were closing the shop and needed
to vacate by the 28th of February.
I hoped to be out in order to avoid the March rent IF my landlord would
let me out of my lease. That evening,
Alicia White (Councilman Rick White’s wife and an artist displaying her
photography in the shop), called me after getting my email. She was very upset and did not want me to say
anything other than YES or NO to her questions.
I had thought all the council members were in the Special Called Meeting, but she informed me Rick was
not and knew nothing about the meeting.
To this day, I believe that Rick and probably all the council members
(except maybe Mayor Pro-Tem Kathy Spillyards) were OUTSIDE THE LOOP of this
group, and probably only know the same stories that the Mayor told Dwight and I
that fateful Monday “that everyone would be told”, which were their own lies of
deception.
On Monday, February 18th we went to the meeting
to “put this to rest” so Dwight could get back to work. We arrived early for our 10:00 a.m. meeting at Cottonwood Church of Christ where
the Mayor is Pastor. The Mayor was
definitely “in character”. The first 20-25
minutes he “primed” us, making us feel at ease in the company of an “ally”, a
“friend”. We settled in for the kill as
he told us about how he had been painfully shy as a child, all but paralyzed to
speak until his parents bought him a clown costume. Behind that face of a clown he became the
person he is today. That very costume
shaped the direction of his life as he became a clown performing at parties, an
early career choice as Ronald McDonald with his own “driver” taking him to
events. He talked about the various
clown figurines in his office, the clown book he authored, and probably all the
honors he has received lifelong. He
shared his demise at the hands of Hewlett Packard and said he “understood” just
how Dwight felt to have had something like this happen to him as his own job
loss was still a fresh wound, but people had helped him as he was now a
pastor…….the warm and fuzzy Eric Hogue did a very fine job of completely
disarming us. We did not see the attack coming
and were truly annihilated before we even woke up from the warm and fuzzy scene
he created for us in his office.
It was like we had been slipped Rohypnol into the water, as
we came out of the dream into the reality of the set-up. As the Mayor shifted the gears from his own
story to ours, it was unbelievable how masterful he was at accusing and
twisting things to his favor. He was no
friend, but a man bent on our destruction.
His anger was so alarming yet very real as his indignation towards us
was disclosed with the unveiling of his mask.
He was crafting the story before our eyes of “what everyone would come
to know”. He said I had caused a Wylie
View implosion by sending the email of the “closing” to my artists and
crafters. He threatened us that if we
did anything else, talked to anyone, he could promise that everyone in town
including all my crafters would hate us.
If Dwight was to ever work again, we had to go along with all he was
saying OR else life as we had known it would never be the same for us. When we tried to correct his diatribe, he
would always interrupt, not allowing us to voice the truth into the scenarios
that had been fabricated. The very few explanations we were actually
able to express were met with his contempt, insults and ridicule and again were
told “what everyone would come to know”.
The Mayor even looked me in the eyes saying “Who will everyone
believe…you or a Pastor? Everyone knows
Pastors don’t lie.” At the end of the
meeting, Dwight was chastised for coming to talk to him AND
accused him of violating the chain of command in addition to everything else he
accused us of. The Mayor had
literally cornered us for the sole purpose of setting up this meeting. He arranged the date, time, and place of the meeting
for BOTH of us to appear. It was done in
such a way that Dwight did NOT feel like he had any choice but to go and Dwight
did want the issue put behind him “so that he could get back to work” as The
Mayor indicated. If Dwight had refused
the Mayor, it would have been an act of insubordination. But by Dwight’s acceptance and going to the
scheduled meeting, the Mayor deceitfully enabled the City to charge Dwight with
insubordination for breaking the chain of command.
Months after the Mayor’s meeting, one thing has come out
that brought some sense to the Mayor’s accusations of Dwight “turning the
Certificate of Occupancy debacle into a POLITICAL ISSUE”. In the June 5, 2013 Wylie News paid
advertisement……”ERIC HOGUE: REAL
ESTATE AGENT…REAL-LY?” and the June issue of In and Around “LOOK WHO’S JOINED THE TEAM!” shows
the Mayor on the Kathy Spillyards Team.
He started his “new career path” back in January 2013 BEFORE they
maneuvered Dwight’s job loss. In our meeting with the Mayor, he kept
saying what Dwight “did” was an offense because he made it a “political issue”
because of Mayor Pro-Tem Kathy Spillyards and I guess that made sense to him,
but certainly not to us. What he did not
say was that before ALL this Certificate of
Occupancy mess started, he too was involved, thanks to his “long-time friend
and real estate agent, Kathy Spillyards”.
If they were not having Open or Closed meetings at the gallery during
those late nights, then he must have been studying and/or preparing for his
exams. Ssssoooo the Certificate of
Occupancy ordinance requirement was EXCUSED because his friend Lynn Grimes did
not want one….Kathy Spillyards being the Wylie Mayor Pro-Tem did not want one
and was absolved as a politician from this ordinance requirement….and the Mayor,
he too is absolved from ordinance requirements because he is The Big Kahuna or
why? Of course, he too denied that any
real estate business was being conducted at the gallery, even though Lynn’s
Keller Williams ad had run for four consecutive years 2010-2013 in the “Wylie Chamber of Commerce Community &
Business Guide”. To simplify
things, it sounds like the ordinances are going to have to be re-written for
“Wylie’s Exceptions To All Rules” so that good and innocent employees are not
hung out to dry because of the whim of the day of the Mayor and all his BFF’s. I definitely understand that these three
individuals DID NOT WANT TO HAVE TO COMPLY WITH THE ORDINANCE, but I still do
not understand WHY?? What is being
hidden in plain sight?
The Mayor was especially angered that we were closing the
shop and told me to “take a week off and quit this emotional knee jerk
reaction, but keep the shop open”. We
kept trying to explain that The Crafter’s Co-op was never intended for OUR
profit, but a community ministry to help others during the economical downturn
and without Dwight’s job to help fund it, we had no option but to close. I also tried to explain that Lynn’s
concentrated efforts to close the shop since the very beginning would not end
IF we were even able to keep the shop open at that location. The Mayor would not accept ANY of our
explanations which made NO sense to us at all, as it was so obvious that they ALL
had gone to painstaking efforts to close the shop down AND
get rid of Dwight. So why were they
demanding that we keep the shop open when Dwight was NOT going to have an
income to keep the doors open? It was
not until several months after the shop was closed that the Mayor’s and ACM’s
“presumptuous orders” to keep the shop open began making sense. Little by little,
things Dwight and I had said to each other began filtering back to us and
we realized that they had the shop “bugged” with audio devices and had been
listening to conversations in the shop for some time. Why were they doing this? Obviously to find out what we knew, when we
knew it, for the purpose of damage control before any exposure could happen. After all, in the games they play, their best
defense is a good offense. And the best
offense is to completely discredit anyone that could be a threat. Our Mayor, former HR Director and CIO for EDS
and Hewlett Packard knows how to exact character assassination so at our first
cry of “WOLF”, nothing we could say would be believed. And that further explains why this ‘gang of
character assassins’ continue in their trumped up efforts with our friends,
community pastors, business associates, the council and chamber members, etc.,
working to completely disarm us of all credibility and even our Christian
witness. Yes, they have hurt us
tremendously, but the Lord is still in control and they can NOT change
that. Each day we see His Hand in it
all, as things are being uncovered and so many people over past years are
coming forward with their own stories.
Pieces in this huge puzzle are coming together and we all are seeing His
light shining through each of our dark, dark tunnels now. We know that the Lord is in this battle and
those waging this war against His children will not continue to prosper. His Promises are there for us and we shall
remain eternally grateful that we are on this side of this battle—for even with
all our huge losses, there is so much more to gain.
To be continued………..
