Ocean Springs aldermen, mayor met with theater group before ending Mary C. contract
Two weeks before the city of Ocean Springs moved to take over management of the famed Mary C. O’Keefe Cultural Center, a few city aldermen and the mayor met with a local theater company that had a grievance.
The Walter Anderson Theater Project took issue with the leadership of the Mary C., which had recently voided the partnership agreement between the two. The theater group wanted the city’s help, and they got it. Ocean Springs had its attorney send a strongly worded cease-and-desist letter to the Mary C.
The meeting was June 24, and on July 7 the aldermen voted in executive session to take over the Mary C. The decision was made without any discussion with Friends of the Mary C., the nonprofit that manages the arts and cultural center. Mayor Shea Dobson did reach out to the interim executive director, who declined to meet, but did not schedule a meeting with another Friends leader who made repeated efforts to contact him.
The Friends say they don’t understand why city officials were willing to meet for 90 minutes with the theater group and others who had concerns about the Mary C., but not to discuss what they heard with the Mary C. Nor did the aldermen respond to the Friends’ leadership when they tried to explain their side of the dispute.
Dobson and the aldermen have said they are making a long-discussed change and hoping to expand the city’s arts and culture programming. The mayor and Alderman Robert Blackman, who attended the June 24 meeting, said it was unrelated to their decision. But none of the aldermen have been willing to describe their discussion ahead of the vote, since they say it took place in executive session.
Rafe O’Neal, treasurer and technical director of the Project as well as technical director at the Mary C., expected based on language in the cease-and-desist letter that the city would set up a meeting between the Friends and his group, who were in the midst of a contract dispute. But a meeting never happened.
“We never asked for the city to do anything like this,” O’Neal said. “All we asked was, can we stop this til we sit down at a table and all three of us work this out?”
Pandemic-strained partnerships
In addition to four representatives of the Theater Project, six to eight others, including representatives of Ocean Springs arts and culture organizations, attended. Dobson, Blackman, Bobby Cox and Joseph Bellman represented the city, according to city attorney Nicole Sullivan. No documentation or official notes were created, she said.
The main impetus for the meeting was the partnership agreement governing the Project’s use of the Mary C.’s theater. That agreement came under particular strain when the pandemic forced the cancellation of upcoming shows. Among other long-term issues, the Friends and the Project disagreed over how to resume programming given the uncertainties of the coronavirus.
In a letter dated June 24, Elizabeth Feder-Hosey, president of the Friends’ board of directors, notified the Project that the Friends were voiding the agreement. The letter said the Project’s planned productions were “terminated” unless arrangements were made for individual shows, but the Project could continue to store its materials at the center.
Because the city owns the building, the Project sought its help in fighting the Friends’ move.
Kevin Westbrook, who has frequently worked on sound for the Theater Project’s productions at the Mary C., attended the meeting
and recalled no one raised the possibility of the city taking over the management of the Mary C.
“The Walter Anderson players I think were just bringing awareness to some problems they were having,” Westbrook said.
After the meeting ended, the city attorney sent the Friends a cease and desist letter, ordering them to stop efforts to alter their contract with the Project.
The letter said the city had the “authority to interfere with Friends of the Mary C.’s activities” according to this line in the city’s contract with the Friends: “The City reserves the right to review events, activities, and programs held at or in connection with the Cultural Center.”
It is the only cease and desist letter Sullivan has sent since she became city attorney in January.
The letter also said the city wanted to meet with the Friends to discuss their agreement with the Project.
‘He has not returned my call’
Not long after the city sent the letter, Dobson asked the Mary C. Interim Executive Director Sara Guice to meet with city officials and representatives of the Project to discuss their contract, but she declined.
Sullivan said she then asked the Friends’ attorney for a meeting. Following that, Feder-Hosey emailed Sullivan, copying Dobson, on July 1 to set up a meeting to discuss the Friends’ contract with the city. She wrote that given work obligations and limited childcare, she was available to meet the week of July 13.
Sullivan told the Sun Herald she “forwarded to the Mayor to coordinate,” but no meeting was scheduled until days after the Friends received their 90-day notice from the city.
In the July 1 email, Feder-Hosey raised another issue. The city has a seat on the Friends’ board, but its representative last attended a meeting in late 2019. Feder-Hosey was hoping the city would appoint someone who could be an active participant.
“I called Bobby Cox and Rob Blackman,” she wrote. “Both did not answer or return my call. I called Shea, and he has not returned my call.”
A decision in executive session
The agenda for the board of aldermen’s July 7 meeting included no mention of the Mary C. because it was discussed only in executive session. The public may never learn exactly what issues the aldermen weighed as they considered their decision.
Cox, who attended the June 24 meeting, has not responded to numerous calls and texts seeking comment. Neither have aldermen Michael Impey and John Gill.
“I just don’t have any comment,” Bellman said when asked why he had time to meet with critics of the Friends but not to speak to anyone at the nonprofit about concerns he had heard.
Blackman told the Sun Herald in a text that the meeting had nothing to do with the decision on July 7.
“Yes, there was a meeting with some people who had complaints,” he said. “We heard them out and even had our attorney send a letter to try to stop the WATP from being evicted from the Mary C. until we could get the other side of the story. There is absolutely no relation to this meeting and the decision to manage the building.”
Blackman said he never talked to anyone at the Mary C. about the complaints, though Dobson did.
Feder-Hosey said she emailed information responding to the Project’s claims to Dobson and the aldermen. They never discussed that information with her.
Blackman said he and current colleagues began talking about taking over management of the building two and a half years ago. He did not say which aldermen participated in that discussion.
Rickey Authement, who represents the ward in which the Mary C. is located, said he never heard anyone propose the city take over management until the board entered executive session on July 7. (He recused himself from the vote since his wife is on the Friends’ board.)
But he doesn’t doubt his colleagues were having conversations without him.
“They would have had to be talking about it,” he said. “They don’t just pop up in an executive session and then make a motion to send the Mary C. a letter saying we’re ending their contract.”
‘There are reasons’
O’Neal didn’t learn about the board’s decision until the Friends received their 90-days notice in mid-July. He said he approves of the board’s move and thinks it will bring “stability” to the Mary C.
But he still doesn’t know exactly why the mayor and aldermen did it.
Westbrook doesn’t know either, though he has a hunch.
“Once the Walter Anderson Project brought their concerns to the mayor and aldermen, I’m sure they followed up on it for further research,” he said. “Apparently they had reasons to do what they did. I don’t know what those reasons are, but apparently there are reasons.”
This story was originally published July 30, 2020 at 5:40 AM.
