The Joplin Globe, Joplin, MO

Joplin Metro

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December 12, 2008

Briarbrook club members to address City Council

By Mike Pound

mpound@joplinglobe.com

CARL JUNCTION, Mo. — A group of Briarbrook Country Club members is to address the Carl Junction City Council in the wake of a closed session Tuesday night.

The group, known as the Men of Briarbrook, has been urging the council to arrange for city purchase of the club from its principal owner, Steve Hays.

The council has scheduled a closed meeting for 6:30 p.m. Tuesday in its chambers.

After the closed-door meeting, the panel will meet in regular session, the agenda for which notes the request by the club group.

Members of the group have alleged that routine maintenance at the club is not being performed. They have expressed increasing frustration with the operation of the club under ownership by Hays. He purchased it in 2007. The club’s restaurant quit serving food in June and the club lost its liquor license.

Earlier this year, the group asked the city to consider purchasing the country club from Hays, and officials say they have been in negotiations for such a step.

Carl Junction City Administrator Steve Lawver would not say Friday whether the Briarbrook Country Club would be the subject of the council’s closed session. But he did say that the city has several pieces of property that the council is considering purchasing.

“I can’t discuss the topic because it is a closed session,” Lawver said.

Lawver also said he did not know why the group of Briarbrook members wanted to address the council.

“They asked to be placed on the agenda, so we did that,” he said.

An attempt to reach Toby Teeter, a spokesman for the Men of Briarbrook, for comment was unsuccessful, as was an attempt to reach Hays.

The club includes an 18-hole golf course, a 6,000-square-foot clubhouse, tennis courts, swimming pool and 95 acres of undeveloped land.

Earlier in the year, the city made an offer to purchase a portion of the golf course, or to purchase the entire club, but Hays rejected the offers. According to the minutes from a June 25 club membership meeting, Teeter said Hays was looking for $2,050,000 for the property.

Any deal to purchase the country club would have to be approved by the City Council and then, to fund the purchase, Carl Junction voters would have to approve a bond issue. According to the Jasper County clerk’s office, in order for an issue to be placed on the April 2009 ballot, the measure would have to be submitted to the clerk’s office by Jan. 27.





Closed meeting

The notice for the 6:30 p.m. session of the Carl Junction City Council cites one of the state’s allowances for going behind closed doors: “Leasing, purchase or sale of a real estate by a public governmental body where public knowledge of the transaction might adversely affect the legal consideration therefor.”

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