Moving to Texas
This document contains three posts made
by Richard Kennebeck, home office employee, Manager of
Information Technology, home office Security and Safety Officer,
heavily involved in the current home office building planning
when it was built in the early 2000's, first began working for
WCG in 1975, submitted my resignation as an employee of WCG in
February, 1995, has visited the first proposed Denton property
as part of his job responsibilities, worked closely with the
administration on a daily basis, and am intimately involved in
membership and ministerial computer files.
By Richard
Kennebeck
To many, the
beginnings of these problems within United leading up to the
current crisis can be found in the attempted move to Texas. In
many ways this is correct.
You may ask who I am. I'll not hide behind an assumed name or
have anyone else post this instead for me anonymously. I work in
the home office in Cincinnati and have worked at the home office
of United since it began in 1995 with the exception of two
years. I graduated from a Dallas suburb high school, have family
in the Dallas area and personally like living in the Dallas
area. I also have owned a pair of cowboy boots for most of my
life (that doesn't make you a Texan but it helps :-) ).
This is a personal post, not a corporate post. I'm posting this
as a member of UCG who backs the COE and the administration and
who backs the vision of what United began with, not the vision
of what it became over the last several years.
A couple months ago I made a long list of problems with the
"move to Denton" process. I decided to share some of these here
since a recent post on this FB group mentioned the Denton move.
This is just a partial list of what I wrote down, but it has the
most important points concerning the DVD that was sent out from
the home office to be played in all churches.
The original DVD presenting the Denton move to the church had
major statistical flaws as well as other flaws, including:
1. The original DVD sent out to the churches elaborated on the
recent growth in income and projected this income to increase in
the future. It stated what with this income, we needed to do
something with it. There are three major problems with this
statement and outlook:
a. We need to be careful about falling into the attitude of
Laodicea:
"You say, 'I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a
thing.' But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful,
poor, blind and naked." We can see from the fallout of the "move
to Texas" proposal that the second part of this scripture fits
us too well. Did the first part fit us also?
b. There were major signs of a worldwide financial and economic
meltdown at the time of the proposal and the DVD. The warnings
to the administration and the COE about this meltdown were
quickly dismissed.
c. A study done by a current COE member several years prior to
the proposal and reported to the COE stated that the
demographics of the Church indicated the Church's income would
continually raise through the late 2000's and then begin to
decline with the aging membership. This again was dismissed by
the administration that backed the proposal to move to Texas.
2. No substantial proof was given for why the ministry and
students must be housed in a campus environment. Even if this
was required, a solution had been proposed by the ABC
administration prior to the DVD that provided dorm-like housing
using facilities available in Cincinnati.
3. The figures for ministry living within 500 miles of
Cincinnati and Dallas were grossly inaccurate. People who could
have given accurate figures were never consulted due to secrecy
surrounding the project in its early formation. And they were
never consulted afterwards. These figures needed to be validated
prior to using them to backup a major $10 million project, and
they especially needed to be validated before using them in a
presentation to the whole church. This was one of the major
points supporting the move to the Denton area, yet look at the
actual figures for people living within 500 miles at the time of
the proposal to move to Denton:
* Literature
subscribers (indicates future growth)
Denton: 90,559 Cincinnati: 235,304
* Church
Attendees
Denton: 4,501 Cincinnati: 8,097
* CoWorkers
(indicates future growth)
Denton: 790 Cincinnati: 1,942
* Donors
(indicates future growth)
Denton: 1,827 Cincinnati: 4,894
* Ministers
Denton: 78 Cincinnati: 135
The DVD stated there were more elders closer to Dallas than to
Cincinnati, but that is clearly wrong. These inaccurate figures
were brought to the attention of those that were behind the move
to Denton prior to the DVD being sent out to the Church but no
mention of the inaccurate counts were made to the churches when
the DVD was played.
4. The original DVD stated that we needed to move to train the
ministry, yet multiple times over the next several years after
the DVD was sent out, Richard Pinelli and his ministerial
training program were commended by the administration for the
high quality training it was providing.
5. The DVD indicated that the COE unanimously approved the move.
This "unanimous approval" was challenged at a home office staff
meeting a week before the DVD was played in all churches. At
this meeting, Clyde Kilough agreed that the unanimous COE
approval was COE approval to bring the proposal before the GCE
not a unanimous approval for the move. Yet the DVD was played in
all churches without any correction of this or the inaccurate
statistics concerning the location of ministry. These
misrepresentations were allowed to continue.
6. The DVD stated, and it was often repeated by various people
in the administration at the time, that the home office had
become too crowded and we could not economically build
additional office space at our current location. But this
absolutely is not the case. The current home office was designed
to expand to provide additional future offices. The walls on the
warehouse side of the building were designed to be pushed out 40
to 50 feet creating
space for many more offices. Offices appeared to be "filled up"
just to say we were too crowded. There were several cases of
underutilized offices. The Council was presented with an
architect’s rendering which actually doubled the size of the
current home office building if needed. Additional other options
are available to increase office space at the home office
without building a third story.
7. Contrary to what was stated in the DVD, there are many, many
locations available in the Cincinnati area that meet or exceed
the requirements needed for a home office facility. IF larger
facilities were needed, staying in the Cincinnati area would
have saved the Work over $500,000 in employee moving costs alone
and countless other monies in lost productivity, lost business
contacts, etc. This money could have been put to use in
preaching the Gospel or training new ministers, or meeting the
needs of the brethren. As was the case in the early days of
United when the search was made for a home office location other
than southern California, requirements for a home office were
manipulated with a location already in mind. (A local real
estate agent was given the requirements for the home office by a
local member and actually stated that with those requirements,
you're moving to Texas.)
8. The DVD presenting the move to Texas was sent out to the
whole church long before the GCE would vote on the issue and
before the GCE even had a chance to look into the matter. It is
the GCE's responsibility to determine the location of the home
office. it is not the Church membership's responsibility.
By Richard
Kennebeck
The DVD that
was sent out to the congregations in support of the "move to
Texas" stated, and it was often repeated, that there was no
suitable land in the Cincinnati area to build a home office
complex. Just as in the time of David Hulme, the requirements
for a location can be manipulated so the outcome of the property
search ends up being the location that is desired, not the best
location. A local real estate agent was given the list of
requirements by a staff member and after looking at the list
said that Texas was the only place to move to with the
requirements that were defined.
The requirements for Cincinnati only allowed for the most
expensive properties in Cincinnati. Multiple other properties
that met all of the requirements except being within specific
zones of Cincinnati were available. Multiple properties just to
the east of I-275 on Ohio 32 and north and south of Cincinnati
on I-75 were available but did not meet the stated requirements
but would have fulfilled all the requirements needed for a new
home office site.
The first property in Texas proposed to the Council had many
issues and was eventually rejected by the Council after great
division within the ministry and the Council.
Some of the problems with this initial property in Denton were:
1. It did not fit one of the requirements specifically stated
by Clyde Kilough for a home office site. The first Denton
property had a large mobile home park immediately next to most
of the main frontage of the property. On at least one occasion,
Cincinnati properties, when brought to the attention of Clyde
Kilough, were said to be unsuitable because they had a mobile
home park next to them.
2. About 10% of the land had old growth trees on it. This land
could not be cleared, trees could not be cut down and other
restrictions were placed on it. These old growth acres were
located near the middle of the main building area of the
property and would have required that the offices and training
facilities be on one side of the land and the residences would
have been over a third of a mile from the facilities.
3. Students would have had to walk, late at night and after
dark, through this heavily wooded area next to a two lane road
and mobile home park to reach the offices and training area from
their dorms. When this was discussed with the administration,
they said they would buy some shuttle buses and hire some
students for transportation. This would have been an ongoing
expense.
4. Since Denton is a large college town, ABC students would
have had a much more difficult time finding work than the
current home office location since the students would have
competed against a large college community.
5. A very large undeveloped area within 1000 yards of the
property and bordered by a chemical plant and railway lines was
zoned industrial which meant there would be little control over
future, undesirable companies moving into the area.
6. The property was within 1,000 yards of a chemical
reprocessing plant and industrial park. This chemical processing
plant was downwind from the property and has a history of safety
violations. While this property was the proposed site for the
new office and under consideration for purchase, at least one
other chemical processing plant similar to the Denton plant had
an explosion and major fire, which released toxic chemicals over
a wide area far beyond the 1000 yards from the plant. The Denton
chemical plant was fined $1.6 million in 2000 for violation of
EPA standards. The parent company was fined $184 million for EPA
violations in 11 states at 67 different facilities. In 2004,
toxic chemicals were found in the soil and ground water at a
former plant run by this company.
When proposing a major move and building a multi-million dollar
complex as the long-term home office of the church, where
students will be housed for multiple months or years at the
facility, where employees will work in an environment for
multiple years, it is essential to select a property that is
healthy and in a suitable environment.
Would you build a multiple million dollar home within ½ mile of
a chemical processing plant? Would you want your children to
live in that environment?
7. In an answer to the GCE Q & A Forum for the move to Texas,
it was stated that the greater Batavia & Amelia area
(Cincinnati) was not suitable for establishing a Church home
office and Bible center. Given the fact that a) a chemical
processing plant is very close, b) mobile home park is very
close, and c) Denton’s reputation as a college town (with its
associated drinking, etc.), how could this parcel of property be
a more suitable place for a church home office, Bible center,
and safe environment for young men and women?
Yet, even with all this evidence against this first property
proposed to the COE, it was tenaciously fought for by the
previous administration and caused great division in the COE and
ministry.
The logical question to ask at this point is "Why did the
previous administration fight so hard to keep the above
property, even after all the above concerns and more were
expressed to them?"
It was because there really wasn’t an abundance of property
available in the Dallas area.
It took two months, until July 24, 2007, with a great deal of
discussion, controversy and heated debate, for the above
property to finally be removed from the property selection list.
On Friday, June 15, 2007, Clyde Kilough had a meeting with my
wife and me concerning the above mentioned property and our
concerns about the safety of building on that site.
It was at that time that Clyde discussed the three properties
that were available in the Dallas/Ft Worth area that the
selection committee had found and stated why the other two did
not meet the requirements.
One of the properties would have cost $3 million dollars. So he
said that unless they could have broken up the property somehow
or sold some of the property after it was purchased it was over
$1 million over budget.
He said the other site had problems and did not really fit the
requirements either.
Therefore, Denton only had one property that met the
requirements, not the multitude of properties that the
administration led the staff, ministry and membership to believe
was available in the Dallas/Ft Worth area.
By Richard Kennebeck
As has been
stated in a previous post of mine, there were major flaws with the
first property selected in Denton, Texas which caused much division
within the ministry and Council. After much debate, it was decided
by the Council that the Denton property was not suitable for
development as the UCG home office.
A new study of properties in the Denton area began without much
success. Finally another property was found in Sanger, Texas. The
new property was actually closer to Oklahoma than to downtown
Dallas.
This second property in the Dallas/Ft Worth area had major flaws
with it and does not meet the initial criteria for a home office
property. These problems were:
1. This Sanger Location does not meet the criteria to be within 45
minutes of a major international airport. Google puts the time to
drive from the Sanger property to DFW at 45 minutes, 1 hour and 10
minutes in traffic . Anyone that has driven the Sanger, TX (Denton)
to DFW airport drive knows that traffic can slow to a crawl. The
"45" minute drive to DFW also requires using toll roads. I've driven
from Denton to the DFW airport and it took longer than 45 minutes
and Sanger is even further from the airport than Denton is. The
drive from the Cincinnati office to the Cincinnati airport is about
30 minutes with or without traffic.
2. The property does not meet the criteria that it must be
connected to a sewer system other than a septic system. This was
stated as a requirement by the administration several times when
properties in Cincinnati were discussed with them. Yet this Sanger
property would need to have a septic system put in. The home office
facilities, student housing, ministerial training housing and the
future auditorium all would have been served by a septic system.
Prior to the downturn in the economy, the estimated timeframe for a
true sewer system running by the property in Sanger was sometime
between 7 and 10 years.
I privately asked Clyde Kilough at the home office move presentation
meeting prior to the DVD being sent out to the church, why there
wasn’t land available in the Cincinnati area. I mentioned that I see
signs for land available all the time. Mr. Kilough mentioned one
possible place in Kentucky that was available but it didn’t have
access to a sewer system so did not meet the criteria. I asked Mr.
Kilough then if we could pay part of the $800,000 that UCG would be
paying to move employees to help a city or county put in a sewer
system. He then said there were other problems with the land such as
a narrow two-lane road going by the property.
3. The administration was going to propose the Sanger property to
the Council, even though the property did not have access to good
quality high speed internet. It was only in the last 90 minutes
prior to the meeting with the Council that I was able to finally get
confirmation from a telecommunications company who thought they
could get high speed out to the property. The problem was that the
property was so far from any major connection that they needed to
boost the signal to get to us. And even with that, they couldn't
commit to high quality service until they tried it out.
There were no cable providers in that area, no telephone DSL
providers and no fiber providers. At the time, satellite was the
only solution and every satellite internet company that I approached
said it would not be the best solution and that we might have
problems.
This was especially dumbfounding since there was a great push within
the previous administration to greatly expand in the internet.
The cost of the high speed internet access in Sanger would have been
multiple thousands of dollars more than the current cost of high
speed internet being enjoyed by the current home office. The Sanger
internet would have cost over $25,000 more per year then our current
internet cost for similar capabilities.
4. The Post Office address for UCG is a Cincinnati address. This
provides the Church with an address in a major, well known city.
When UCG moved to Cincinnati it was felt that having the major city
address was important enough to have a member of our staff drive
about 10 extra miles each day to pick mail up in Cincinnati rather
than at the local Milford Post Office.
The Closest major city to Sanger would have been FT Worth which
would have required someone to drive much further to pick up the
mail. Costing the work additional time and money.
5. It took the property search committee a long time to find
another piece of land after the Denton land was rejected. The new
proposed property was further out from DFW then the Denton property
and further out from Dallas/Ft Worth. The Sanger property did not
have reasonably priced internet access. The Sanger property does not
have the needed sewer facilities. The only conclusion that can
logically be reached from these points is that there really isn’t
that much land in the DFW area that meets the criteria for a home
office.
The Cincinnati area should have been re-evaluated when the criteria
was changed to allow the Sanger property to be purchased. Many
properties available in the Cincinnati area met or exceeded the
requirements that the Sanger property met. A move to one of the
properties in the Cincinnati area would have saved at least $700,000
in moving costs alone, employees wouldn’t have needed to go through
the upheaval of moving their families, we wouldn't have lost
productivity due to the move and we wouldn't have lost our business
contacts in the local area.
6. The administration pushed through the purchase of the land in
Sanger, TX even though there was great controversy and heated debate
within the GCE concerning the move. A wise business decision would
have been to wait until after the GCE vote to recind the move to
Texas was made and then decide on purchasing the land if the move
was still approved. At the time of the purchase of the land in
Sanger, TX, there was already a resolution to rescind or one was
going to be presented to the GCE shortly. $1.6 million should never
have been paid for a piece of property when there was a significant
chance that the move would not occur, especially in the troubled
economy we were in.
As can be seen by my three "Move to Texas" posts, there was great
deception used by the administration to force the move to Texas,
Even though it was causing great division in the Church, great
division in the Council, great division in the home office, great
division in the ministry, was filled with deception and wasn't a
wise financial decision. Even the Strategic Planning expert the
Council and administration brought in during that time stated that
the move wasn't a good idea and in front of the whole home office
staff, including the COE and administration, said that it was not
being handled properly and should be handled differently.
Yet the administration moved forward with little or no desire to
heed the warnings that were given to them by many.
This same attitude is the attitude that continues today by many that
have broken from United. There is much deception, untruths, mis-information,
partial truths, attacking, character assassination and little desire
to do what is really right and needed.
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