| 8/26/2009 2:40:00 PM | Email this article • Print this article | Court rules against Binko
Derrick Knutson
Review staff
Maplewood City Council Candidate Julie Binko has lost a $3,000 small claims lawsuit against the city.
An attorney from the Ramsey County Conciliation court, who presides over small claims court cases, ruled that Binko should receive no money from Maplewood or from the city officials named in her lawsuit.
Binko claimed the city used her ideas to implement "greenway" projects in south Maplewood, and she was never properly compensated.
Those who were named in her lawsuit refuted those claims, which were aired in a conciliation court hearing July 31.
Defendants named in Binko's suit included Community Development and Parks Department Director DuWayne Konewko, Maplewood Natural Resources Coordinator Ginny Gaynor, city Environmental Planner Shann Finwall, Maplewood City Council Member John Nephew and chair of the Maplewood Parks and Recreation Commission Peter Fischer.
"I'm glad the court didn't see any case there," Nephew said.
Fischer echoed nephew's sentiment.
"I'm just real happy that I'm no longer involved with that, and the judge found that there were no grounds (for a suit)," he said.
Binko's claims
In January, Binko formed her own nonprofit organization, called Stonehouse: Educational Enterprises for Sustainability.
At the time, Friends of Maplewood Nature, a non-profit organization that Binko was formerly affiliated with, was in the process of attempting to obtain a $15,000 Xcel grant to study the preservation and expansion of greenway corridors throughout the city. Greenways are continuous strips of undeveloped land that allow animals and birds to move from one park or preserve to another, said Barbara Kroll, a board member of Friends.
Kroll said Binko approached the organization about helping to write a grant proposal in an attempt to obtain the $15,000. Binko was supposed to be allocated $5,000 of that money to write and revise a curriculum for greenway-related plans, Kroll said. Kroll said she broke off the Friends' relationship with Binko when Binko changed her allocation of the money for the project from $5,000 to $7,000.
The four-page grant proposal Binko produced was never actually submitted to Xcel for funding.
Kroll and Binko had corresponded via e-mail during February of this year, and on March 7, the Friends' board of directors accepted Binko's offer to help in the grant-writing process.
"She sought us out; we said, 'Fine.' What was the risk?" Kroll said. "We didn't know we'd have to go to court."
Kroll added that Binko was actively writing the proposal from March 7 to March 10, a total of four days.
Over that time, Binko put together the "draft proprietary proposal" to obtain the funding. During the July 31 court hearing, Binko said the document encompassed more than four pages and took her 30 hours to write.
Kroll said she had helped Binko with an Xcel grant template, which was nine pages long, and that might be the more-than-four-page document Binko was referring to.
Binko said she was suing the city for the time it took to write the document, because she claimed city officials used the ideas in the document to implement greenway projects in the city. Those claims were refuted by Nephew, Fischer members of Friends, and City Attorney Alan Kantrud during and after the court hearing. Documentation from the city's Comprehensive Plan and grants received in 2008 backs up the city officials' claims as well.
Binko's response
A request by the Review for an interview with Binko for the article about the July 31 court hearing was rebuffed with an e-mail. The message portion of Binko's reply was blank, but the subject line read:
"You sat in the courtroom -- you tell me what the case was about."
Another request by the Review last week asking Binko if she planned to file an appeal to the conciliation court's decision garnered with a 535-word e-mail Binko had apparently prepared as a "rebuttal" to the original article.
The e-mail did not answer the query about an appeal.
Instead, Binko wrote that her business' relationship with the Friends of Maplewood Nature was "poorly misrepresented" in the Review's article. "The intent of the EXCEL (sic) grant was to put Friends in a position to become grant seeking and generate their own funds," she wrote. "Second, this grant was going to be the first step in making the main umbrella organization to those interested in environmental preservation and greenways in Maplewood."
"What intensified the issue was that some in Maplewood City Hall, like those named in the suit, think they know better as to what is good for Maplewood citizens and press ahead doggedly, with their own personal or political agendas, creating a wake of destructions and hard feelings," Binko wrote.
She ended the e-mail with, "The divisiveness, I see in city hall, has motivated me to run for city council and change the way business is done."
A deterrent to volunteering?
Fischer said lawsuits such as Binko's could act as a deterrent to attracting qualified people to join the city's commissions because of the fear that they might be sued for something.
"It does have a chilling effect on people wanting to serve on commissions in the future," he said. "I'm concerned about the message sent to other people serving on commissions or wanting to serve on commission. I keep my fingers crossed that this will just die a quiet death."
Derrick Knutson can be reached at dknutson@lillienews.com or at 651-748-7825.
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Reader Comments
Posted: Thursday, August 27, 2009
Article comment by:
ken
So was it an Excel grant or a Xcel Energy grant that she was working on? Spelling the name of the corporation correctly is a good idea when one is applying for a grant from them.
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