REP. RICK MURPHY

   Gilbert gets dealt one bad hand after another on the issue of fire protection for its county islands, and Mayor Steve Berman somewhat childish outbursts on this issue continues to erode whatever public sympathy the town once received.
   As Tribune writer Blake Herzog wrote for Wednesday’s Tribune, a three-person panel has been appointed and will meet Thursday to begin discussions on how much the county island fire district will tax its residents to pay Gilbert for fire service.
   The panel is part of a 2007 state law designed to compel Gilbert to extend fire protection to county islands that refused to annex after a private fire company withdrew. The panel’s job is to settle any disagreements between Gilbert and the independent fire district on much it will cost Gilbert to answer fire calls, and therefore what the district should pay.
   Both the fire district and Gilbert appointed one panel representative each. Naturally, the fire district picked Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Gilbert (county island), a former lawyer who has been the champion of getting municipal fire protection for his neighbors without annexation. Gilbert Town Manager George Pettit is a sound choice to represent the town’s interests.
   But the third panelist, the swing vote who was supposed to be somewhat independent of the two sides, turned out to be Biggs’ nomination, Rep. Rick Murphy, R-Peoria.
   I don’t believe Murphy is Biggs’ puppet. But he certainly seems less than neutral and more inclined to the fire district’s point of view, as illustrated by his comment to Herzog.
   “The reason (Biggs chose me), I would think, is I worked closely with Representative Biggs in crafting the bill, because there are some areas in Peoria and Glendale, Peoria in particular, that may find themselves in the same position as the Gilbert county islands,” Murphy said. “I don’t anticipate the city of Peoria will behave in the same fashion as Gilbert. I hope they don’t.”
   Let’s just say it’s a good bet the fire district will get the property tax rate it wants, which is much lower than Gilbert has proposed.
   Murphy became the third panelist over Gilbert’s objections because he was confirmed by the Republican majority of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. That has Mayor Berman demanding, in his special manner, that East Valley supervisors Don Stapley and Fulton Brock be thrown out of office.
   Berman’s stubbornness has tainted the thinking on this issue throughout Gilbert Town Hall, and I believe it has hurt the community in the long run.
   Gilbert was right on the principle that town residents shouldn’t carry the costs for county island property owners who don’t want to annex. But county and state elected officials just wouldn’t accept that a group of people could be without any option for fire protection. Gilbert appeared to be the best organization to help, so it was stuck with that responsibility.
   Once it become clear that Gilbert would no longer avoid the 2007 law, the town could have reached an amicable deal, even if that meant subsidizing the county island residents at first. Healing this bitter dispute could made it possible for Gilbert to approach the fire district later about paying more, once it had evidence from actual experience about the costs of providing fire protection.
   Instead, the fire district is going to be hostile for long time to any Gilbert proposal, no matter how well-intentioned. And it’s going to take even longer to convince many of these county island property owners to eventually annex and become true Gilbert neighbors.

Upper Photo: Original diorama of Battle of Palmetto Ranch (Tribune file); Lower photo: Reconstituted diorama now on display at Texas Military Forces Museum (submitted photo).

   There has been some interesting reaction to a prior post this week about the Civil War battle diorama from Highland High School that’s again on display at the Texas Military Forces Museum in Austin. Supporters of museum director Jeff Hunt seem to be ignorant of a fundamental fact about dioramas that has shaped my thinking on this issue.
   I didn’t understand this fact, either, until Highland history teacher Glen Frakes explained it to me during a lengthy interview a couple of months ago. Frakes said battle dioramas are a single scene intended to represent events that take place over the course of minutes, hours, days or even weeks. So dioramas have to compress both time and space to create a coherent, comprehensive picture that viewers can understand and learn from.
   As such, dioramas always include some artistic interpretation of these events by their crafters and never offer a competely accurate telling of the story as might be offered in a video or the written word. Sometimes, a diorama maker might add something (or leave something off) that would seem wrong to a historian seeped deeply in knowledge of the diorama’s subject. But that intentional act conveys important information to the uninitiated, or removes distracting clutter.
   For example, a diorama might leave off the roof or wall off of a particular building so viewers can peer inside to gleen additional details. Military units and equipment might be placed closer together than is porportionally accurate in order to fit other relevant items onto the same diorama.
   And sometimes, key details are simply unknown to modern historians and the diorama maker has to make a good guess. Frakes said when he worked with his students to create the first of Highland’s five dioramas at the Texas museum — about the Battle of the Alamo — it wasn’t known where some of the major players were killed that they wanted to represent. So the students tried to place those figures in logical locations or where they were more likely to be seen by viewers.
   What all of this adds up to is dioramas never should be changed or rebuilt without at least consulting with the original crafters, when possible. Frakes made it clear that serious thought and planning goes into every detail of a diorama.
   Hunt has claimed he tried to consult with Frakes before he took the diorama apart, but Frakes didn’t want to make any changes. Frakes has told me that never happened. Based on my research, Frakes’ version of events has held up as more credible so far.

RECONSTRUCTED DIORAMA OF BATTLE OF PALMETTO RANCH (submitted to the Tribune by Retired Maj. Ted Aanenson)

   Jeff Hunt is going to get away with it.
   It looks like the director of the Texas Military Forces Museum isn’t going to be held accountable for his trashing of a piece of art from Arizona – a Civil War diorama put together over three years by students from Gilbert’s Highland High School under the direction of history teacher Glen Frakes.
   As Tribune writer Hayley Ringle first reported Tuesday night, a different version of the diorama is back on the display at the museum located at a Texas National Guard facility in Austin. Hunt took apart the diorama last year a couple of months after it was delivered and first put on display. He claimed the piece had historical inaccuracies and was too large for a planned museum remodeling.
   In reality, Hunt’s decision to take the diorama apart was an assault on the hard work of the Highland students and the education that Frakes provided them. After enormous political pressure and media scrutiny was applied to this issue, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and the National Guard ordered the museum to restore the diorama and to let the public view it again.
   I don’t know much about the craft of diorama-making. So I have to rely on Frakes and eyewitness accounts about what Hunt accomplished. Frakes says the new version barely resembles the artwork that his students created.
   “My students built a diorama that looked like it was built by adult diorama model makers,” Frakes told the Tribune. “This looks like it was made by elementary school children. This is like something a child of 7 or 8 would do on the living room carpet.”
   One compelling fact for me is the new version uses only about 170 of the original 750 hand-assembled soldier figurines. That seems to confirm far more of the figurines were damaged or destroyed when the diorama was taken apart than Hunt has ever been willing to admit.*
   The Texas National Guard wants this issue to just go away. In interviews with Ringle, me and other media, National Guard spokesmen keep emphasizing that the agency is focused on supporting troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. The implication has been we critics are wasting the National Guard’s time by fretting over a 10-foot piece of wood, plaster and pewter.
   But the tragic mishandling of the diorama, and the refusal afterward to return it to Gilbert for proper restoration, suggests the Texas National Guard isn’t willing to invest the time or money to get even the little things right. I can only hope the Texas National Guard is showing more honor and attention to the people under its command, since it cares little about the visions and dedication of good teenagers in Gilbert.
*Update:
   Glen Frakes pointed out to me Wednesday that Jeff Hunt has said in some media reports that he intends to put together a second diorama for another Civil War battle. So, to be fair to Hunt, it’s possible he held back some of the original 750 figurines for future display.

The story about the destruction of a Civil War diorama built by Gilbert’s Highland High School students has gotten suprisingly little coverage in the home state of the Texas Military Forces Museum. That’s the site of the massacre of the Palmetto Ranch diorama and subsequent cover-up by museum director Jeff Hunt.

But there’s an excellent overview in this week’s Austin Chronicle, a weekly newspaper in the Texas capital city where the museum is located. The best part of the story is the reporter’s first-hand look at the remaining shell of the 10-foot diorama, as she saw “several broken hooves where cavalry had been removed, severed below the horses’ knees.”

This directly contradicts Hunt’s earlier claims that he carefully removed and packed away every single one of the 750 figures that had been handcrafted and painted by the Highland students. Hunt is forced to admit he actually damaged a piece of art that he doesn’t own.

“Taking this apart, did some rifles get bent? Some figures get broken? Sure,” Hunt told the Austin Chronicle.

This story is part of an on-going drumbeat of pressure against the museum and its owner, the Texas National Guard, to return the diorama to Gilbert so Highland students and their teacher, Glen Frakes, can try to restore it.

Keith Olbermann, host of “Countdown” on MSNBC, also revisited the issue on April 15 –discussing a column by me two days earlier that highlighted the deep holes in Jeff Hunt’s official explanation for taking apart the diorama. Unfortunately, Olbermann doesn’t mention me or the Tribune by name. Come on, Keith, is it so hard to give us just a little credit?

I didn’t get anything posted on my blog last week as I spent most of my free time researching the furor over the Battle of the Palmetto Ranch diorama. This 10-foot-long display portraying the final battle of the Civil War was built by students at Gilbert’s Highland High School for use at the Texas Military Forces Museum. The diorama was “dismantled” a few weeks later after it arrived in August by new museum director Jeff Hunt.

A column I wrote for Sunday’s Perspective section explores why Hunt’s explanation for taking apart the diorama doesn’t make much sense. My underlying conclusion is that Hunt made a horrible decision to essentially destroy thousands of hours of delicate work by the Highland students. The best way for him and the museum to rectify that mistake is to send the pieces of the diorama back to Gilbert so the students can try to restore it.

One issue not discussed in my Sunday column is how Hunt acted recklessly without any clear authority to even touch the diorama, much less to “dismantle” it.

Hunt insists the diorama belongs solely to the museum, a claim backed up by the Texas National Guard which owns the museum building and employs its staff. But neither Hunt nor his predecessors ever signed any written agreements with Highland or history teacher Glen Frakes, who oversaw the team of students who worked on the diorama after school hours.

Frakes spent about $23,000 for supplies, primarily for thousands of pieces of wood and metal used in the soldier figurines that were hand assembled and painted. That money was provided by the museum’s foundation, a separate nonprofit group that raises funds to support the museum’s mission. Frakes estimates the labor donated by the students should be valued at somewhere between $60,000 and $130,000.

Frakes has a fair argument that the diorama is co-owned by him, the students and the foundation and was only on loan to the museum itself. Certainly, Hunt should have received approval from the museum foundation and Frakes before he moved to dramatically change its appearance.

But Hunt acted on his own, apparently without anyone else present, to remove all 750 figurines and then leave behind an empty shell of a diorama under a tarp.

Hunt has said he wants to use the figurines in a smaller and more accurate diorama. First, he might have to prove he has the right to keep possession of them.

Fred Phillis (Tribune file photo)

It won’t be long before someone working for the town of Gilbert asks Fred Phillis to reveal his DNA coding, his first crush and whether he really loves his mother.

Phillis, a Gilbert resident, is heading up a petition drive that seeks to force Gilbert Mayor Steve Berman into a recall election this year.

Tribune writer Beth Lucas has reported that Berman’s campaign filed a legal complaint against Phillis, claiming he bought a series of campaign signs to support the petition drive before he formally created the recall committee. Town officials decided anyone already on Gilbert’s payroll had a potential conflict-of-interest in checking out the complaint, which sort of makes sense since one of the main attacks against Berman is he wields too much power at Town Hall.

So Gilbert hired an outside lawyer to handle the investigation. That lawyer, David Pennartz, apparently didn’t accept Phillis’ initial explanation that he bought 10 signs for about $270, and donated them to the campaign once the committee was created.

So Pennartz has sent Phillis a sweeping list of questions that asking for detailed information about everyone Phillis might have talked to regarding the recall.

So far, Phillis is refusing to answer those questions and demanding to know Pennartz’s legal authority for asking them. Good for Phillis. This “inquiry” smacks of harassment and could easily discourage people from talking about political issues if they have to worry about investigators demanding later to know who they are and what they said.

Update:
Gilbert Police Sgt. Mark Marino called me to make it clear that steps were taken by his department and the administration at Coronado Elementary School to prevent students from witnessing the arrest of a teacher for writing bad checks. Marino said the teacher was escorted from her classroom by a school official and was taken to an isolated area of campus to meet the arresting police officers.

Marino also repeated his earlier statement there were attempts to catch up with the teacher outside of school. But he said couldn’t disclose yet what attempts were, and that information might not be available until the police report is released to the public.

I respect the Gilbert police for showing some concern for how tramatic arresting a teacher in front of students can be. But given what I know at this point, I still believe the police should tried harder to avoid coming to the school to make the arrest.

Original post:

Tribune writer David Biscobing has updated information about the Thursday morning arrest of a Higley teacher at Coronado Elementary School in Gilbert. As the arrest took place on campus during class time, the school felt it had to rush a letter home to parents to try to explain what was going on. No real details were available Thursday, but the school said the arrest had nothing to do with the teacher’s job or her interaction with students.

Now we know the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office had issued a misdemeanor warrant for writing bad checks. That makes me wonder why the Gilbert Police Department had scare some Higley children by arresting a teacher at 10:45 a.m. This is a relatively minor offense. The teacher had shown up to work, so it doesn’t appear there was an immediate danger that she would flee.

Gilbert Police Sgt. Mark Marino said the teacher had been avoiding police, so the department decided to pick her at her work place when it was clear she would be there, Biscobing tells me. I have to wonder just how hard the police were trying if the teacher still was doing her job like there was nothing wrong. But surely, the police could have arrested the teacher before school started or waited until the end of the day. There was no reason for the police to inject this extra drama at the school, with the implication that the teacher had done something so bad that she had be arrested right away.

I’m not trying to excuse bad check-writing. But sometimes people in bad financial straits just make mistakes with no ill-intent, and then those mistakes snowball into misdemeanor charges when they fail to deal with the bounced checks. (Yes, I have accidentally bounced a couple of checks in my life. But I paid off the amounts and associated penalties promptly and law enforcement never got involved.)

Gilbert police should have shown some compassion for the students and the school, if not for the teacher herself, and found a better time to make this arrest.

Tribune photo 

There’s a museum curator in Texas who should be out of a job pretty darn quick. And a day or two in the local stockade might be reasonable as well.

The Tribune reported Saturday that Jeff Hunt of Texas Military Forces Museum at Camp Mabry in Austin, Texas, recently destroyed a diorama of a Civil War battle that was painstakingly designed and painted by students at Gilbert’s Highland High School.

The diorama, featuring hundreds of little soldier figurines, was of the Battle at Palmetto Ranch, which is considered to be the final conflict of the war between the states. Highland put together the display at the specific request of Hunt’s predecessor because the students have developed a reputation for detailed work of excellence.

But Hunt, who wrote a book about the Battle at Palmetto Ranch, decided after the diorama had been on display for seven weeks that it was historically inaccurate — and he ripped it apart.

If Hunt truly is the expert he claims to be, he knows just how much time and energy goes into preparing these types of dioramas. In this case, the Highland students more than three years on the display and it cost $23,000 to finish.

Hunt deserves to lose his job for his heartless destruction of these students’ hard work. And if the diorama still belonged to Highland High School instead of the museum, he committed some criminal mischief or vandalism as well.

Gilbert Mayor Steve Berman

“New” Gilbert resident Donna Davis has a guest column today in the Tribune calling on her neighbors to rise up and sweep the town’s current leadership out of office. But she’s not stepping forward to take the political stones and arrows in their place, which could limit the impact of her views to that of armchair quarterbacks everywhere.

I say Davis is a “new” resident because she used to be one of those county island residents who passionately pushed for Gilbert to provide fire department services without annexation into the town. Davis lost that battle as her neighborhood sought to join the town once it was clear that Rural/Metro would end regular service to that area.

Davis hasn’t gone away, but continues to criticize the leadership of Mayor Steve Berman and Town Manager George Pettit. She speaks out frequently about what she sees as unmitigated arrogance from Berman and a lap-dog attitude from the rest of the Town Council.

But Davis won’t offer Gilbert voters a chance to compare her views on leadership with the current officeholders. Davis told me in an email message she has no plans to seek a seat on the Town Council.

I’m not surprised. Davis is far from alone in her criticism of Berman and the council. Some of those critics ran a united campaign during last spring to oust two incumbents. They failed, and they didn’t really come close.

It’s easier to complain about public officials in blogs and letters to the editor and to launch attack Web sites, than to stand before voters in an election campaign and convince them that you would do a better job.

Berman and his allies will continue take easy victories, and rightly claim they have wide public support, if credible challengers are unable make their point at the ballot box.