OCEAN SPRINGS, MS (GC Wire) – The Ocean Springs Board of Aldermen voted on Tuesday not to correct the public minutes of a four-year-old meeting, despite clear evidence that Board-approved contracts had been swapped out with contracts never approved by the Board.
The documents in question play a major role in determining whether an $8 million publicly funded parking garage legally belongs to the residents of Ocean Springs or a private company.
The original approved contracts point to the structure being owned by taxpayers. The record now shows those documents were replaced by unapproved contracts pointing toward private ownership.
The Board voted to keep the record as it is, reflecting an impossible scenario where aldermen approved contracts that would not be created until a year into the future.
Evidence Ignored
Alderman Karen Stennis presented the Board with a simple timeline:
• January 27, 2022 – the agreements with the state for the grant were drafted
• May 17, 2022 – the Board of Aldermen voted to authorize the mayor to sign the agreements
• August 2022 – agreements were signed, notarized, and executed by all parties – City, OHOS, and the State
Stennis then pointed out the official record no longer reflects those agreements. Instead, it contains agreements signed by the mayor a year later that were never approved by the Board.
One of the most stunning pieces of evidence Stennis presented was that the City’s official minutes for the day in question attach a hybrid of the different contracts. The cover page is from the 2022 contracts the City now says don’t exist, while the interior pages are of the amended 2023 versions.
Copies of the 2022 agreements were added to the public agenda last week and made available to Board members and the public. Even so, after Stennis’s lengthy presentation, two aldermen claimed to have no knowledge of the issue.
Ward 1 Alderman Steve Tillis appeared uncertain of the topic.
“My head is spinning,” he said. “Are we talking about the 1515 parking garage?”
Ward 3 Alderman Kevin Wade said he had never seen the documents in question.
“The only thing I’ve got to say is that’s a lot of paperwork,” he said. “This is the first meeting I’ve seen it.”
Alderman Shannon Pfeiffer responded that the documents had been provided to all members months earlier. City records also show Wade voted to approve the same 2022 agreements he now says he has never seen.
A Question That Kept Changing
By the end of the debate, the original question — what the Board approved on May 17, 2022 — had been replaced by a series of hypotheticals and contradictory explanations.
From the start, the issue before the Board was straightforward:
What did the Board of Aldermen approve on May 17, 2022?
Stennis laid out a clear timeline. The agreements were drafted in January 2022, approved in May, and executed in August. The documents now attached to those minutes were created in 2023.
No one disputed those dates.
But when City Attorney David Harris began speaking, the discussion started to move.
Rather than address what the Board approved that day, Harris questioned whether the 2022 agreements ever “went into effect.”
“It’s my understanding that that grant agreement never went into effect,” he said.
The focus shifted from what was approved on a particular day to what happened afterward.
Moments later, he moved the discussion again. Harris told the Board he found no statute that allows the aldermen to correct the record.
Alderman Shannon Pfeiffer responded directly: “You also found no law saying we could not fix the record.”
The issue was no longer what the Board approved, but whether the current Board had the authority to correct its own records.
Stennis repeatedly tried to return the conversation to the original question, but Harris continued to shift the focus elsewhere.
He then raised concerns about “collateral attacks,” notice requirements, and potential consequences if the minutes were corrected.
The discussion moved again, this time from accuracy to risk.
Stennis clarified that her motion was not a collateral attack and did not seek to challenge the prior Board’s decision, but just the opposite – to preserve it by having the record reflect exactly what they had approved.
‘I Will Stand Corrected’
Harris moved lanes again, shifting towards how the contracts should be interpreted, rather than whether the previous Board approved them. “If you can point to me where in the 2022 agreement it says that the city will own the garage, I will stand corrected,” he said.
But the agreements approved and executed in 2022 were not limited to a single clause.
They were executed alongside a certified application submitted to the State by Ocean Springs and their private partners OHOS Land / Development LLC, which described the project as one in which the City would own the parking structure upon completion.
Under the terms of the agreements, the parties certified that the material facts contained in those applications were “true and correct.”
Those certified facts included:
“OHOS Land, LLC has entered into an agreement in which it will transfer ownership of the parking garage and amenities to the City upon completing construction.”
And:
“The City of Ocean Springs is in full support of the project… and will be the owner of the proposed parking garage.”
In prior meetings, Harris instructed the Board to ignore those statements, describing them as a “sales pitch” rather than statements that should be taken seriously – despite the City certifying them as factual.
The difference between the two sets of contracts – 2022 vs. 2023 – is not minor.
What Changed When the Record Swapped Contracts?
The agreements approved in 2022 tied compliance to a single exhibit:
“The Entity shall comply with the terms and provisions of this Agreement and the Act and specifically with the terms set out in Item 4 of Annex A.”
Annex A outlines the project milestones required to retain the grant funding.
The later versions — executed a year later and never approved by the Board — modified that same provision:
“The Entity shall comply with the terms and provisions of this Agreement and the Act and specifically with the terms set out in Item 4 of Annex A, Annex B, and Annex C.”
That additional language does not appear in the agreements approved by the Board on May 17, 2022.
Annex B is a letter of intent describing a potential future lease arrangement in which OHOS could retain ownership of the garage. The document is labeled as “preliminary.”
Annex C is a separate agreement providing for a ten percent payment from the $8 million grant to private attorney Erich Nichols.
What Did the Board Do?
In the end, Harris said he could not explain how agreements from 2022 were replaced in the record with agreements from 2023.
He then offered his conclusion:
“They can’t be taken out because they’re in there,” he said.
Alderman Steve Tillis followed with his summary of the debate. “I would say that the attorney has given us the advice he has given us,” he said.
“I think we’ve discussed it enough and we’re ready to vote.”
Aldermen Rob Blackman and Julie Messenger did not speak.
Only Stennis and Pfeiffer voted to correct the record to reflect what was approved in May 2022.
Voting against the motion were Aldermen Tillis, Wade, Blackman, Messenger, and Hinton.
For now, the official record will continue to reflect that on May 17, 2022, the Ocean Springs Board of Aldermen approved documents that did not yet exist.
The question remains: who removed the 2022 documents from the official record and replaced them with different ones?
