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Wednesday, August 26, 2020
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Judge finds Lakes course owner defied restoration orders BY PAUL MARYNIAK AFN Executive Editor
DISEASE FIGHTER
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he six-year legal battle between two Ahwatukee Lakes homeowners and golf course owner Wilson Gee’s company leaped toward a conclusion last week as a Superior Court judge held the firm in contempt of court for doing nothing to restore the site. In a blistering ruling made from the bench after more than five hours of testimony and argument, Superior Court Judge Theodore Campagnolo set a Sept. 1 hearing on sanctions against ALCR after finding it ignored three separate orders to return golf to the 101-acre site. Attorney Tim Barnes told the judge he wants the company to pay $10,000 or $15,000 for each of the 202 homes abutting the golf course
School daze
– a total of $2.02 million or $3.03 million. “Having listened to him,” Campagnolo said of Gee, “it is clear that he just seems to want to disregard the orders of this court. It’s as if they don’t exist. In fact, he even said today… ’You have to look at the order but also you have to look at the economics.’ That’s not what the order says.” Calling Superior Court Judge John Hannah’s order of May 2018 “clear and unambiguous,” Campagnolo said: “There is no doubt that ALCR knew what the order said and that the company was able to comply with the judgment, with the order and that ALCR intentionally or knowingly failed to comply. They had plenty of opportunities and ALCR simply did not comply with the judgment.”
KID TO KID
“No matter what Mr. Gee or the company think about how it’s not a good business decision to reconstruct and operate a golf course doesn’t matter – and that’s been affirmed by the Court of Appeals,” he added. “That’s what it says. That’s what has to be done.” Hannah on three separate occasions from the summer of 2016 to May 2018 found that Gee had violated the site’s covenants, conditions and restrictions by failing to keep the site as a golf course. In May 2018, he ordered that Gee restore the course – although he did not specify whether it had to be the once-popular 18-hole executive course with five lakes that Gee closed in 2013 because it was no longer profitable.
see LAKES page 14
COVID-19 data improves for TU, Kyrene districts BY PAUL MARYNIAK AFN Executive Editor
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Ahwatukee and other students are back in classrooms at the East Valley Institute of Technology in Mesa but the hallways cast an eerie sight as students walk in one direction single-file. This same scenario likely will be playing out in all schools once kids are allowed to return to campuses. Details: Page 16. (Patrick Jervis Jr./Courtesy of EVIT)
hile new data on COVID-19 spread last week pointed to improving conditions in both Tempe Union and Kyrene school districts, there were reminders that the coronavirus is far from over. At Milenio Elementary School in Ahwatukee, seven children were directed to be quarantined at home for two weeks after a pupil tested positive for the virus two days after campuses reopened on a limited basis, mostly for special needs students. And Tempe Union Assistant Superintendent Sean McDonald last week told the Governing Board that in the last two weeks, 21 district employees have tested positive for COVID-19. As a result of contact tracing, McDonald said, 62 staffers have been quarantined. No students
see VIRUS page 4