Booneville City Council rejects offer to buy Kemper Military

[Anonymous]

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascit ... 429640.htm

Posted on Tue, Apr. 19, 2005

Booneville City Council rejects offer to buy Kemper Military School property

Associated Press

BOONEVILLE, Mo. - City officials Monday night rejected an offer from a group led by the founder of a controversial association of boarding schools to buy the former Kemper Military School.

The Booneville City Council, with little discussion, voted 7-0 against selling the property to a group led by Utah businessman Robert Lichfield, founder of World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools.

The city also will return a $100,000 earnest-money deposit, ending a courtship that began last summer.

"From the outcry the public had given me about this, my mind was made up," said Morris Carter, the city councilman who made the motion to reject the offer. "If the rest of the council had gotten the same information I had, there was no point in discussing it."

Despite an agenda item that said the council would go into closed session to discuss the proposal, the body decided instead to go right to a vote.

"I didn't even know they were going to vote," said Randall Hinton, who with his brother, Russell Hinton, had planned to lease the facility from Lichfield and run it themselves. "I'm sad for the city. Who doesn't want to help kids?"

Members of World Wide Association, which works with troubled teens across the country and in Jamaica, have been the subject of several child-abuse allegations. One member of Congress was so concerned that he asked the Justice Department to investigate the organization and its members.

Randall Hinton, who has worked at several of the association's schools over the years, said he had no intention of making Kemper a member of the association, but instead wanted to market Kemper as a military school.

When it closed in 2002, Kemper was the oldest military academy west of the Mississippi River. The city has owned the property since April 2003.

The Hinton brothers, who were at the meeting Monday night, said they were surprised and disappointed by the council's decision.

Dan Painter, a newly elected council member, said his constituents had made it clear that they opposed the proposed sale.

"It was overwhelming at times," he said.

[Antigen]

Yeay!!!!

Religion is all bunk.
--Thomas Edison, American inventor

[Antigen]

On 2005-04-19 01:19:00, Anonymous wrote:

"I didn't even know they were going to vote," said Randall Hinton, who with his brother, Russell Hinton, had planned to lease the facility from Lichfield and run it themselves. "I'm sad for the city. Who doesn't want to help kids?"

The hubris! :eek:

Cops; you wake `em up you gotta dance with `em. They lead.
-- Jack McNulty

[Anonymous]

I am truly grateful for this decision and hope it will send a strong message across this country about the facilities under the WWASP network. Thank you  to all of you who took the time to write letters and make phone calls.

[Anonymous]

PS - I think it would be helpful if we could all forward related info from the kemper ordeal to local officials and media in towns where WWASP facilities are currently located.

[Anonymous]

Absolutely fantastic.

[Jeff_Berryman]

The city of Boonville needed that payroll badly, I'm sure.  Rejecting that purchase offer shows a moral fiber you don't often find in elected officials.  If only the government of Jamaica had that much backbone.

I find it interesting that Hinton was not planning to hang the WWASP label on this facility.  I suspect that they realize that the name is more a liability than an asset any more.  I wouldn't be surprised if they stop attaching the label to new programs from now on.  

It won't be long now, in my opinion.  Every time WWASP makes the news more journalists get WWASP-conscious.  Even the ones who don't write anything just now stick index cards in their files about it for future reference.  And each time there's another news outbreak, more journalists say "OK, time for a story on this topic" which causes still more cards to be filed by other journalists.  We are near a flashpoint where a big WWASP story will trigger a media frenzy sufficient to really raise public awareness and maybe get Congress off its butt to do something.

The other event I'm waiting for is a big court judgement.  I spoke to a legal investigator a while back who was getting into this cause.  His last major investigation involved nursing homes in Texas.  His law firm got a big judgement against one operator in that state, and instantly every lawyer in Texas became a nursing home specialist.  The storm of litigation got so intense that the biggest operator in the state closed down two hundred facilities and left Texas altogether.  The remaining programs had to clean up their act big time.  One big judgement against ANY "behavior modification" program is going to change the entire industry for the better.  I hope the day is not far off.

[Anonymous]

This is great news, it sets a precedent for future cities to reject them too!  :grin:  :grin:  :grin:

[Anonymous]

On 2005-04-19 07:43:00, Anonymous wrote:

"This is great news, it sets a precedent for future cities to reject them too!  :grin:  :grin:  :grin: "

Weren't they rejected by some place in Arizona a few years ago?

[Joyce Harris]

Sure need some help on the Who Am I Discovery thread---PUBLIC NOTICE...to send same type of emails etc...to the planning commission to stop the Sudweeks efforts to build the "new" Whitmore Academy.

The Sudweeks are currently under investigatin for child abuse...but are moving forward with plans for this new facility.

Help.

[Anonymous]

A man from the Juab planning commision told me May 5 is their next meeting. He suggested I and any other concern citizen attend.

he said the sudweeks had many kids there.

[Anonymous]

I am a alumni from Kemper that was against the sale of the school to the Hinton's/WWASP organization.  A simple Google search led me to an post on this forum from ANTIGEN.

With widespread use of the net for people to research topics such as this - it is important for sites like this to keep posting and following up on where these institutions try to open up.

I know that there is a lot of debate on these forums regarding the pro's & con's of whether places like Tranquility Bay are effective or not.  Those posts are for those who have attended to discuss.  I would like to recommend that the moderators of these forums keep an area similar to the "Hot Topics" alive for future researchers to be able to link to and help them to find out the answers for themselves.

[001010]

Send every bit of info to them that's available!