Eddie Arnold's Real Message to Philip R. Klein

Eddie Arnold responded to a posting on last week's Southeast Texas Political Review, where Philip R. Klein denigrated the Jefferson County Commissioners for a deal involving the U.S. Postal Encoding Center. For years, the building served as the Southeast Texas headquarters for Sears, before being willed to the County by Vic Rogers.

Afterwards, the county leased the building to the U.S. Post Office for its Encoding Center. When those operations were moved to Houston, the county was left with a vacant building which they've been trying to sell for several years.

Typically, Philip refused to print the letter in its entirety. Instead, he butchered the letter into specific parts but left out those portions for which he had no rebuttal. As an example, Philip left this statement out:

You really should consider moving else where or run for political office yourself if you’re so unhappy with what’s going on in Jefferson County.

I've posed this same question to Philip on numerous occasions.

Below, you'll find Commissioner Arnold's letter as written in its entirety. I thought it was a reasoned, articulate, and succinct explanation of the real issue, unlike Philip's sophomoric and juvenile response.

From: Eddie Arnold
Sent: Thursday, February 04, 2010 5:51 PM
To: 'SETREVIEW@gtbizclass.com.'
Subject: Postal Encoding Building Sale by Jefferson County

Mr. Klein;

Apparently you have a deficiency with your Math skills, a lack of understanding of the agreement that was negotiated, or as usual you don’t care about the truth and facts with regards to the Jefferson County Commissioners Court decision to sell the Postal Encoding Center  in downtown Beaumont. All you care about is publishing your normal negativity, false innuendos and half truths.

You really should consider moving else where or run for political office yourself if you’re so unhappy with what’s going on in Jefferson County.

To set the record straight, if you are interested in the truth, is the real WIN-WIN deal the taxpayers of Jefferson County should know about.

You wrote that the County was selling the empty building to a rich businessman for $2.0 million and then the County was going to pay him $2.0 million to lease it back. I don’t know where you got your information, apparently you or your “source close to the fourth floor”  used some FUSSY MATH.

The real deal is as follows:

1. Jefferson County Commissioners plan for the present and future needs of County Government including both expanding for sometimes unfunded State and Federal mandates as well as Down or Right sizing as the case may be. This includes office space allocations.
   
   
2. Jefferson County taxpayers owned a large 66,000 sf. office building at 750 Pearl St downtown Beaumont, TX, ( formerly the Postal Encoding Center - PEC, building ), which has been empty since the USPS moved out in Dec. 2005.
   
   
3. The Commissioners court decided that we should try and sell this building. We repaired the Hurricane Rita damage and put the building on the market to sell via a public bid. We received no bids the first attempt. Then the building sustained additional damage from Hurricane IKE in 2008. We once again considered selling the empty facility.
   
   
4. A survey was conducted for the County to try and determine how much, if any, future office space might be needed for County Government, in lieu of having to pay market lease rates, if needed. This survey was conducted to ensure that our decision to sell the Postal Encoding center was the Right One.  
   
   
5. Jefferson County properly bid the sale of this public property out, following and exceeding all local and State procurement laws.
   
   
6. Jefferson County received 1 and only 1 bid which was within 4% +- of an independent certified appraisal conducted by a local certified appraiser. The bid was advertised for over 3 months and the closing date was even extended.  In addition the property was advertised on LOOP NET a nationally known Commercial property listing web site for the same period. We had several hundred hits on the sight during this time frame as well as receiving several local inquiries.
   
   
7. To protect the taxpayers from incurring higher lease rates, if needed, we negotiated discounted lease rates for a 4-5 year period with the buyer as a part of the sell.   
   
   
8. The purchaser and the County agreed that if and only if the County needed extra floor space within the next 4-5 years, that the County could exercise an option to lease back up to 14,000 feet of 1^st floor office space. The lease price negotiated includes floor space, parking, all utilities, taxes, insurance and janitorial at a price well below market. The key is the County doesn’t pay anything until when or if we exercise the option and actually occupy the space.
   
   
9. So Mr. Klein Do the Math. If Jefferson County were to exercise the option for the full 14,000 sf. at the negotiated rate of $1.00 per sq. ft., the very maximum we would pay for the full 5 years is less than $1.0 million. To my knowledge we have no plans to need the space for more than 1-3 years MAX if at all. SO HOW DID YOU ARRIVE AT A $2.0 MILLION FIGURE “Good old boy Deal” ?????
   
   
10. So I contend that Yes it’s a good deal for the taxpayers of Jefferson County. It puts a publically held property back on the Tax roles which will generate over $50,000. in new tax revenue each year for the areas taxing entities, it saves Jefferson County over $55,000 annually in insurance and utility costs and not to mention having 250 - 400 new professional jobs added to the downtown Beaumont economy.
    
    
11. So let’s see that would add up to a $500,000 savings to the taxpayers, Plus the $2,111,000 Jefferson County received from the sale of the PEC building that was donated to the taxpayers.

WOW MR. KLEIN, IT SEEMS TO ADD UP TO OVER $ 2.5 million to the good or worst case if we do need all the additional floor space $1.5 million savings to Jefferson County Taxpayers.  Anyway you try and twist this it’s a WIN – WIN  for Jefferson County Taxpayers.

So Mr. Klein, How can you make the false accusations you published on your blog, and that you expressed in person on radio and TV programs about this issue  when you apparently didn’t bother to research the truth?  I think that your readers need to know the truth, so I hope you will publish this for all to see.


Eddie Arnold
Jefferson County Commissioner Pct. #1
1149 Pearl 4th Floor
Beaumont, TX  77701
Offc. 409 835-8442
Fax.  409 835-8628

Well said. I'll note that Philip's standard operating procedure is to offer uninformed opinions over issues that he's not bothered to research. Likewise, butchering Eddie's original message shows that this isn't about the taxpayers of Jefferson County; instead, it's about Philip's ego.

At the very least, this obfuscation is unethical. More realistically, it's another excellent example of Philip R. Klein's reckless disregard for the truth.

Note to Eddie Arnold: Don't pay any attention to those purported letters from Philip's readers on his Reader Mail page -- Philip wrote the messages himself and answered them, too.

Any comments, Philip?