Chapter 1: Introduction
During Spring Break of our senior year at Florida State, my friend Chelsea convinced another friend, Samantha, as well as myself to come home with her to Rome, Georgia, to relax a bit. This was out of character for us, as wild, beach vacations were more the norm, but we had gotten into a bit of trouble the year before in Daytona during Spring Break so maybe a calm week would do us some good.
When we arrived on Sunday afternoon, we were met by Chelsea's younger sister, Ashley, who was visibly upset.
"What is wrong, honey?" Chelsea said.
"They are going to tear down Ridge Ferry Park," was the reply.
"No!" exclaimed the older sister.
"What is Ridge Ferry Park?" I asked.
"It is the biggest park in town." Chelsea replied.
Ashley started talking quickly, "It is pretty much everything there is to do here! It has a swimming pool, a zoo, a skate park, hiking trails, tennis courts, picnic areas. Everything. Even the teen cruising areas where Chelsea used to park with her boyfriends."
"Why are they tearing it down?" Samantha had finally started paying attention.
Ashley, smiling slightly from her last little joke about her sister, said, "Mr. Jenkins is buying it, and he is going to replace everything with a private golf course and luxury homes. "
"That can't be, Ash. No one would stand for that," her sister told her.
"He can, and he is doing it. The Parks Department is over budget for the year, and Brian Sullivan, the Park and Recreation Director can sell it in order to make budget. Everyone knows that he has received some kind of a bribe, but no one can prove anything. He's been the director for two years and he has already done it to several sites; he is horrible. He only wants to focus on the park properties that make money, like the ones that lease out spaces to businesses and then charge you a lot to camp there and stuff."
"What about the mayor? Can't he just stop it?" I asked.
"He tried, and he is willing to move money from the city budget to save the park, but he cannot get approval to do that until the next scheduled city council meeting. That's not until Tuesday, the 25th. If the park board votes at noon on Thursday the 20th, like they plan to, it will be too late. We're having rallies and events there all week, starting today since it is Earth Day. The theme is a lot more local this year, not just generic 'Save the Environment' stuff like most years; now it's 'Save our Park', but like I said, we are too late to do anything. " Ashley was obviously very concerned with this issue.
"Who on the board supports this?" Chelsea wanted to know.
Ashley explained. "Sullivan needs seven votes for anything to pass. He usually has nine lined up in advance; that way he's safe in case someone does not show for the meeting. It is always the same folks. The older people who think that getting rid of these places will stop the kids from being noisy and stuff. Plus, he has gotten some local business owners appointed. They always support each other since, in their eyes, development means profit."
"So, all we need to do is change three minds by Thursday?" Chelsea asked her sister.
"Well, sure, but, how, Chelsea?"
"Leave that to me, sweety," the older sister replied.
Samantha and I were convinced by Chelsea to help, and it really did not take much convincing. We were afraid that we were going to be bored all week anyway. At least this gave us something to do. Sam and I spent Monday reading up on the issue and deciding whose votes we could flip and, as importantly, how we could do it, while Chelsea went and visited with the mayor, who was an old family friend. Unfortunately, Ashley's version of the events was fairly accurate. The mayor would act and block it if possible, but he could not until after the park board meeting.
We got all the information that we could gather on each member of the board, and we determined that only four members were solidly in our corner. Two bitter old ladies basically voted against anything fun; one was a building supply company owner who wanted any and all development; three were either members of the developer's family or his employees, and then, there was Sullivan himself, Joseph McIntosh, an older gentleman who had been in politics his entire life, and Stan Eisen, basically a 40ish wannabe playboy who had inherited his wealth and owned the town bank.
"Ooh, this one's a hottie, who's this?" Samantha asked as she held up a photo.
"Oh, God, that's Sullivan," Chelsea said, "He's the one doing all this; you need to pick another one."
But Samantha was insistent that if she was going to do this, she at least wanted to have fun. And Samantha pretty much always gets her way.
"I'll get him to change his vote, and we will be done," she said.
"It's not that easy, Sam," Chelsea started to explain, "Even if you somehow convince him, which I am not even sure is possible, the item is still on the agenda, and a vote will still be held. Some of these others still will have motives to see this done."
Eventually it was decided that we would have to take a divide and conquer approach. Samantha would get her way and get Brian Sullivan; Chelsea would get Joseph McIntosh & I, Brittany, would be responsible for Stan Eisen's vote.
Chapter 2: Chelsea's Story
After dividing up our targets, Chelsea made a few telephone calls and set up a lunch meeting on Wednesday with Joe McIntosh. Seeing as how it was a small town, everyone was a friend of a friend, and appointments weren't that hard to come by.
Chelsea spent Tuesday & Wednesday preparing for her meeting. She prepared some charts and spreadsheets filled with facts about the park and what it meant to the community; she compiled a couple of scrapbooks filled with photos of the park and people having fun at the park, but most of all, she learned as much as she could about Joseph McIntosh.
He was in his 60's and had served on practically every board in town. At one point, he had owned the town's newspaper, but he had sold it years ago and now just lives off of his investments. The local gossip was that Joe had been married years ago, but no one seemed to know what ever happened to his wife; the consensus was that she had just moved out of state, though the reasons for this varied quite a bit. Regardless, there was no wife in the picture. The only real "dirt" on Joe was that he would drive out to the county line every month and pick up the current issue of Playboy magazine.
Wednesday arrived, and Chelsea made sure that she got to the restaurant first. By arriving about 40 minutes prior to the noon meeting time, she was able to secure the exact booth that she wanted. It was a two-person booth near the back of the restaurant. It was unusual because the seats in the booth were perpendicular to one another, rather than across from one another. Sometimes the restaurant would add a chair across from each booth bench and create a square table for four, but that wouldn't be needed today. Chelsea knew that being as close to Joe as she could be would be critical. She could give her presentation much easier, plus make it much more convenient for Joe to focus on her. The seat that he would occupy basically faced nothing but a wall, so there would be no worry of other patrons seeing anything that looked odd or coming over to say "Hello" or anything. Chelsea knew that she only had about an hour to change his mind and did not want any distractions.
Joseph arrived promptly at noon, and the hostess led him back to the booth.
As he neared the booth, Chelsea stood up and greeted him, "Mr. McIntosh, thanks so much for meeting me."
"Please call me Joe," he quickly answered.
