Editor’s note: The following is a statement from Philip Johnson, agent to Neely Farms Family.

I was not present at the Tuesday night BOC meeting but I was informed of a series of questions John Douglas asked Lloyd Kerr about the mosque property. One of the questions was when Lloyd had become aware that the Avery Community Church, Cemetery and School became more than that. Lloyd’s answer was that he had learned one week ago. That leaves the clear implication that first there was misinformation supplied by me (since John Douglas had specifically used my name) and that Lloyd had only been disabused of that misinformation one week ago. Giving Lloyd the benefit of the doubt that indeed he did not know the nature of the application for the AUP which was submitted in June of 2015 since he was not personally present at either of the two meetings I had with the Department of Developmental Services at that time, the troublesome aspect of the exchange is that it gave the impression that the Department was misled, which is blatantly inaccurate.

To clear up any confusion which exists as to the sequence of events, I have put together the following information from my notes and communication:

1) I have represented the Neely Family for nearly 25 years, first representing Ted Neely and since his passing his family and its ownership entities; and

2) In early 2015, the Neely family asked me to become involved in negotiating a real estate sales contract with a commercial real estate agent named Al Taf of the Atlanta real estate brokerage company of Marcus and Millichaps who had responded to an advertisement on Craig’s List offering for sale a 135 acre tract located at County Line Road and Ga Hwy 162 in Newton County, Georgia (always referred to us as the “Avery Tract” since Ted Neely had purchased this property from the Avery family); and

3) I proceeded to negotiate with Mr. Taf who informed me he represented a corporation whose directors were professionals and business men in Atlanta of East Asian (Indian) descent of the Muslim faith who were looking for a site to locate a cemetery; and

4) The Purchaser was represented by an old Atlanta attorney who I had worked with several times during the last thirty-five years in commercial real estate transactions; and

5) The Purchaser made a full price cash offer and the offer was reduced to a sales contract dated March 13, 2015 which was accepted by the Seller and the Purchaser; and

6) At the request of the Neely Family I checked the name of the corporation which would be the Purchaser with the Georgia Secretary of State’s records and found the corporation in good standing with officers and registered agent from north Atlanta; and

7) The contract provided that the sale was contingent on the approval of the use of the property as a cemetery, body preparation facility and a church by the appropriate officials of Newton County Department of Development Services pursuant to a conceptual plan to be provided by the Purchaser; and

8) I contacted the Newton County Department of Development Services to ascertain the Newton County requirements for a house of worship, cemetery and church affiliated school, and was provided the attached “Checklist for Establishing or Expanding a Place of Worship” ; and

9) The first paragraph of the Checklist (Section 105 Definitions) defines Place of Worship as “A lot or building wherein persons assemble for religious worship. It goes on to state that “the term shall also include any of the following: cathedral, chapel, church, synagogue, temple, mosque, tabernacle and other similar terms.”; and
10) Section 510-480 as noted on the Checklist provides the site must be a minimum of 4.0 acres and list accessory uses permitted including a cemetery; and

11) I scheduled a meeting with the Department of Development Services and went over the requirements of the Checklist and the applicable code sections including Section 510-150 regarding cemeteries which provides that the cemetery site shall be a minimum of 10 acres; and

12) Based upon the applicable requirements of the Ordinance and the Checklist and the requirements of the contract that a survey be obtained by the Purchaser, the Purchaser engaged an engineering firm to survey the property and to obtain from a professional land use planner a conceptual plan reflecting the anticipated use of the property ( a copy of which conceptual plan is attached hereto); and

13) With the completed survey and the conceptual plan, the Seller, as owner of the property, submitted A Petition for Administrative Use Permit for the House of Worship and the Cemetery which are terms of art in that they tract the exact language of the County Ordinance and the Checklist earlier provided by the Department of Development Services ( a copy of which Petition for Administrative Use Permit is attached hereto); and

14) I personally delivered the Petition for Administrative Use Permit to the Department of Development Services and discussed the accessory use to the cemetery to insure that a burial preparation facility as noted on the conceptual plan was in fact permitted under the use. We specifically discussed the fact that no embalming would take place in the burial preparation facility because of the customs and practices of the Islamic faith which did not provide for embalming of the deceased”; and

15) The original Administrative Use Permit Case number AUP15-000235 (a copy of which is attached hereto) dated June 10, 2015, was emailed to me and I forwarded the same to the agent for the Purchaser; and

16) I received comments back from the agent for the purchaser which I then forwarded in the form of an email with requests for changes or clarifications to the Department of Development Services at 6:50 pm on 6/15/2015 ( a copy of the email is attached hereto with the addressee at the Department of Development Services redacted); and

17) Attached to the email to the Department of Development Services was a copy of Form Letter 947 from the Internal Revenue Service to AL MADD AL ISLAMI INC. confirming their tax exempt status under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code with a request that the AUP be issued to AL MADD AL ISLAMI INC as the purchaser of the property; and

18) On June 16, 2015, a revised AUP15-000235 was issued to AL MADD AL ISLAMI INC. Aka Avery Community Church with the other requested clarification on the cemetery and the burial preparation facility by the Department of Development Services; and

19) On August 26, 2015, the sale of the 135.168 acres by closed on behalf of the purchaser by Talley & Associates of Conyers, Georgia …

The only significance of item 20 is to show that inaccurate, poorly researched and little understood items reported are taken as the gospel and repeated throughout the discussion on social media.

Far more important in this discussion is the inference by Lloyd that the Department of Development Services was misled, and that they only learned of the facts within the last week. The AUP was actually issued to AL MADD AL ISLAMI INC when corrected by my email to the Department of Development Services to insure that they issued in the correct name. The Department was fully informed as to the faith of the church and those to be buried in the cemetery, as well as the nature of the burial process according to the customs and practices of the Islamic faith.

While, as I noted above, Lloyd may not have had personal knowledge of the details, he clearly could have reviewed the file, and discovered everything noted above. His answer to John’s obvious set up question to indict me for misrepresentation acquiesced in John’s mischief and grandstanding. What is baffling is why Lloyd participated in this charade.

The truth of the matter is that the Department of Development Services could have taken no other action than the approval of the Administrative Use Permit under its own ordinance which clearly provides that the term House of Worship in its code includes every conceivable religious house of worship in its definition including specifically a mosque.

And the language in the Newton County Ordinance is not there by accident. If the equal protection clause of the United States Constitution were not clear enough on the point, the provisions of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 is, and the act is not one passed by a liberal left. It was introduced by Senator Warren Hatch of Utah, a fairly well credentialed conservative, and passed both houses of Congress unanimously.

So it would appear that the more honest approach for Lloyd in his answer, and John and the other members of the BOC in their subsequent actions would have been to tell the attendees at the Tuesday night meeting of the BOC that the correct action had been taken because it was the law. If the BOC wants to make it more onerous to obtain a permit for a church in the future they can do so but only with the understanding that it will apply to the Baptist and the Methodist as well as the Islamic and Hindu houses of worship.

Intellectual dishonesty, disingenuous comments to play to the bias of a portion of the public and gross misrepresentation of the facts clearly are not strong attributes of leadership. The suggestion that it is okay to infer some possible different outcome by a five week moratorium so that the public will forget, or as has been said, to let some air get out of the balloon is so cynical in its view of the public and the responsibility of leadership as to be offensive.

Finally, the comments which suggest the Neely family did anything despicable by selling their land to a willing buyer at a reasonable price for a use specifically permitted under the Newton County Ordinances is ridiculous. I remember two years ago many of us, including many now attacking the Neely family, joined to fight against what we felt an unreasonable infringement of the right of a property owner to control his own property during the 2050 discussion. Do principles mean nothing? Is it truly a matter of whose ox is the one getting gored?

For the Chairman of the Newton County Board of Commissioners to say in a comment to the Newton Citizens about the sale by the Neely family that money talks is far below the dignity of the office, but that has never stopped Keith before.
The actions of the Chair, the BOC nor the County Manager over this matter could hardly be described as examples of profiles in courage.