TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS OF THE COMANCHE BUSINESS COMMITTEE MONTHLY MEETING JULY 10, 2010, 10:09 A.M. COMANCHE NATION COMPLEX LAWTON, OKLAHOMA __________________________________________________ REPORTED BY: KELLY STOABS, CSR DODSON REPORTING & ASSOCIATES 435 NORTH WALKER, SUITE 102 OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA 73102 (405) 235-1828 ~ (405) 235-1266 (FAX) dcri@coxinet.net A P P E A R A N C E S COMANCHE NATION BUSINESS COMMITTEE MEMBERS: Michael Burgess, Chairman Richard Henson, Vice-Chairman Robert Tippeconnie, Secretary-treasurer Edmond Mahseet, Committeeman #1 (Outgoing) Ronald Red Elk, Committeeman #1 (Incoming) Lanny Asepermy, Committeeman #2 (Outgoing) Mark Wauahdooah, Committeeman #2 (Incoming) Darrell Kosechequetah, Committeeman #3 Clyde R. Narcomey, Committeeman #4 LEGAL COUNSEL: William Norman, James Burson Hobbs, Straus, Dean & Walker * * * * * * INDEX OF PROCEEDINGS PAGE Meeting called to order at 10:09 a.m. 6 Roll call. 6 Invocation. 8 Motion passed to change the agenda, 8 moving recognition of outgoing CBC and induction of the incoming from Section V to III. Mr. RedElk inducted as Committeeman 9 Number 1. Mr. Wauahdooah inducted as 9 Committeemen Number 2. Recognition of Edmond Mahseet, 10 outgoing Committeeman Number 1. Recognition of Lanny Asepermy, 10 outgoing Committeeman Number 2. Motion passed to approve minutes of 10 June 2010 meeting. Motion passed to approve Resolution 11 Number 68-10/Enrollment List Number 831/Ineligible. Motion passed to approve Resolution 12 Number 69-10/Enrollment List Number 832/Ineligible. Motion passed to approve Resolution 13 Number 70-10/Enrollment List Number 833/Ineligible. Motion passed to approve Resolution 13 Number 71-10/Enrollment List Number 834/Relinquishment. Motion passed to approve Resolution 13 Number 72-10/Enrollment List Number 835/Relinquishment. INDEX OF PROCEEDINGS (continued) PAGE Motion passed to approve Resolution 14 Number 73-10/Enrollment List Number 836/Eligible. Motion passed to approve Resolution 16 Number 75-10/Approve profit Apache Community Center parking lot. Motion passed to approve Resolution 18 Number 74-10/Injury Prevention grant. Motion passed to approve Resolution 19 Number 76-10/Transportation access road. Motion passed to table Resolution 20 Number 77-10/Golf Course Property. Break held from 11:00 a.m. to 33 11:24 a.m. Motion passed to approve Resolution 33 Number 78-10/Signatures. Motion passed to table Resolution 41 Number 79-10/CBC duties, responsibilities and authorities. Motion passed to amend agenda, 83 allowing the tribal administrator to make a statement. Casino Development. 84 Forensic Audit. 142 Water Codes. 163 Motion passed to pay retainer fee to 187 Mr. Tahkopfer and to negotiate with him on water codes. Executive session commenced at 209 1:33 p.m. INDEX OF PROCEEDINGS (continued) PAGE Reporter's Certificate. 210 Secretary/Treasurer's Certificate. 211 (Meeting called to order at 10:09 a.m.) MR. BURGESS: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Give a minute here for one of our members to come to the table. Thank you for being here. I wish we could have had more chairs for y'all, but we've loaned out a lot of chairs to several of the community centers for some funerals that happened and they didn't make it back yet. Ivan, would you put the agenda up? Do you have a copy of the agenda? MR. JOE: Nicole is getting it. MR. BURGESS: Oh, she's getting it? Thank you. We'll come to order here, Mr. Secretary. Mr. Tippeconnie, if you'll kindly do roll call for us, please. MR. TIPPECONNIE: Michael Burgess? MR. BURGESS: Here. MR. TIPPECONNIE: Richard Henson? MR. HENSON: Here. MR. TIPPECONNIE: Robert Tippeconnie? Here. Edmond Mahseet? MR. MAHSEET: Here. MR. TIPPECONNIE: Lanny Asepermy? MR. ASEPERMY: Here. MR. BURGESS: Darrell Kosechequetah? MR. KOSECHEQUETAH: Here. MR. TIPPECONNIE: Clyde Narcomey? MR. NARCOMEY: Here. MR. TIPPECONNIE: All Present. MR. BURGESS: Okay. We have a guest with us today, a gentleman that I had the pleasure of meeting recently at Palo Duro and a great friend to our new -- a great friend to our new member here, Mr. Mark Wauahdooah. Mark, would you introduce Dr. Tom? MR. WAUAHDOOAH: The Texas Apostolic Prayer Network is pleased to be here today to represent all of Texas apostles and prophets and intercessors of Texas. This is Tom Schlueter. Mary Hart is next to him. I think that's Bill. I'm part of the Texas Apostolic Prayer Network. We've asked if Dr. Tom Schlueter would give the opening invocation, so would you mind stepping up there? MR. BURGESS: You're welcome to use this, Tom, or I know your voice will carry. MR. SCHLUETER: Let's just pray. First off, before I do, it's good to be here. We're excited for Mark's election to this, and we just wanted to be here to honor him and to bless him, but it's also just an honor for us to be among you and honor you. Let's invite the Lord to be in your midst. (Invocation.) MR. BURGESS: Originally we had planned to have the induction of the new members brought forward after we did a review of the minutes and went through our resolutions. And so Lanny and Eddie, we have a cake that's on its way and a little punch to say thank you to you guys. But because Lanny wants to catch a flight, wherever he's going, he wants to go early. So we're going to ask that we do have -- we want to say thank you. We have some items to say thank you to you. Then we'll do induction here of our two new members. MR. ASEPERMY: Mr. Chairman, I would like to make a motion to change the agenda to move the recognition of the outgoing CBC and induction of the incoming from V, to put it under III. MR. BURGESS: Motion's been made. MR. KOSECHEQUETAH: Second. MR. HENSON: Second. MR. BURGESS: Second's been done. All those in favor signify by saying "aye." (Aye.) MR. BURGESS: All those opposed, same sign. All those abstain, same sign. Lanny, where's your wife? Shelly? Would you give Clorandia a call and see if she's on her way? She's got the cake. What we'll do is we'll have -- induct our two new members into the CBC so they may be seated and begin official business. And so we'll start with our former member, Mr. Ron RedElk. If you would come forward, Ron. (Mr. RedElk inducted as Committeeman Number 1.) (Mr. Wauahdooah inducted as Committeemen Number 2.) MR. WAUAHDOOAH: While he's doing that, I just want to say thank you to my wife, thank you to Ta-a'pah. I want to thank all the people from Texas for coming here, all the people both in state and out of state being here today. And I thank my worthy opponents Pahdopony and Ed Eschiti to bring about the opportunity to bring out issues which you're so concerned about. So I sign this on your behalf. MR. BURGESS: We all know it's not an easy task to be working within a system that is followed by many people who have varying ideas and protocol or proper procedures, let's say. However, these two gentlemen have done a gentlemen's job of helping the nation, assisting where necessary and as best we all can. And we have plaques here that we want to say thank you, appreciate your job, the effort you put forward. And so if you guys, Ed, would you come forward, please? Lanny? (Recognition of Edmond Mahseet, outgoing Committeeman Number 1.) (Recognition of Lanny Asepermy, outgoing Committeeman Number 2.) MR. HENSON: I make a motion we approve the minutes. MR. BURGESS: Back to business here. Mr. Henson has made the motion to approve our minutes from last month's meeting. Can I get a second? MR. KOSECHEQUETAH: Second. MR. BURGESS: I have a second made by Darrell Kosechequetah. All those in favor signify by saying "aye." (Aye.) MR. BURGESS: All those opposed, same sign. All those abstain, same sign. Okay. We're moving over to the resolutions. We have several here. Resolution 68-10 is an enrollment issue. It states that the applicants named do not possess the required one-eighth degree of Comanche blood. Then Resolution 69-10, an applicant does not descend from a Comanche allottee, an original allottee, as provided by the constitution in Article III. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Mr. Chairman, are we going to get an agenda? MR. BURGESS: We didn't have any printed out. What we have are these here. Are you able to print some in the IT department? MS. SHANGREAUX: Can we see the rest of it? MR. BURGESS: You probably need to print about 40. We'll have some printed-out agendas here shortly. We do have the agenda on the board, those of you who have a notepad or pencil and want to follow along. MR. NARCOMEY: Mr. Chairman, I make a motion to approve Resolution 68-10. MR. BURGESS: Resolution 68-10? How about 69-10? Resolutions 1 and 2 are concerned about individuals who aren't meeting the specifications and constitution members. MR. NARCOMEY: That's the enrollment, right? MR. BURGESS: Yeah, that's the enrollment. They don't have the blood quantum or they don't descend from original allottees. So can you approve those two in one motion? Will you amend your motion? MR. NARCOMEY: Yes. MR. BURGESS: Motion's made to pass Resolution 68-10 and Resolution 69-10. Those are Enrollment List Numbers 831 and 832, individuals who do not meet blood quantum and/or descendancy to be on the Comanche Nation rolls. Do I have a second? MR. HENSON: I'll second it. MR. BURGESS: Motion's made by Mr. Narcomey and seconded by Mr. Henson. All those in favor signify by saying "aye." (Aye.) MR. BURGESS: All those opposed, same sign. All those abstain, same sign. The ayes have it. Coming to Resolution Number 70-10, this is a minor that was -- two minors that were -- had been applied for membership and they also are not eligible to receive enrollment with the nation. I'm not sure of the age ranges. Yeah, they can reapply at the age of 18 years old. Yeah, one. The other one is enrolled in another nation, to the state. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: Mr. Chairman, I make a motion that we accept this. MR. BURGESS: Okay. Mr. Wauahdooah has made the motion. MR. NARCOMEY: Second. MR. BURGESS: Second by Mr. Narcomey. All those in favor signify by saying "aye." (Aye.) MR. BURGESS: All those opposed, same sign. All those abstain, same sign. We also have a Resolution 71-10, a member who is going to relinquish enrollment with the Comanche Nation to move over to another tribe. And then Resolution 72-10 is another member who wishes to relinquish membership to Comanche Nation to remain a member of another tribe. MR. NARCOMEY: I make a motion to approve. MR. TIPPECONNIE: Both? MR. BURGESS: Both of the resolutions. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: I second both those resolutions. MR. BURGESS: All right. A motion is made by Mr. Narcomey and a second by Mr. Wauahdooah to approve Resolution 71-10, 72-10. On the screen they will be listed as Enrollment List Numbers 834 and 835. All those in favor signify by saying "aye." (Aye.) MR. BURGESS: All those opposed, same sign. All those abstain, same sign. It passed. That brings our total enrollment -- thank you to Lanny again, we've got the final number. We are now at 14,896 members. Resolution 73-10 will put us at that number, excuse me, which is currently a new number of 64 for new members. Do I have a motion to approve? MR. HENSON: Motion to approve 73-10? MR. BURGESS: Correct. MR. HENSON: I'll make that motion. MR. BURGESS: Made by Mr. Henson. I need a second, second to approve Resolution 73-10. MR. KOSECHEQUETAH: I second, Chairman. MR. BURGESS: All right. Mr. Kosechequetah made the second. All those in favor signify by saying "aye." (Aye.) MR. BURGESS: All those opposed, same sign. All those abstain, same sign. Gentlemen, Resolution 74-10 is accepting the money carried over from the project at Apache Community Center in Apache. This is monies left over from the budgeted funds to improve the parking lot. MR. HENSON: Is that 74-10? MR. BURGESS: Yes, 74-10. MR. HENSON: I'll make a motion to approve. MRS. GALLEGOS: I have a question. MR. BURGESS: Yes, Mrs. Gallegos. MRS. GALLEGOS: How much was that amount left over on that project? MR. BURGESS: Has funds available for $70,000. I'm not sure the exact left over. It's a four-year period, so it will be a maximum of 240,000. Whatever the difference was. We just have a resolution approving it. I don't see the balance. Hang on a second. Resolution 75-10, I have the wrong number. Carryover funds are 33,800-something from the parking lot. That's called profit by the Bureau. We say it's carryover funds back to the nation. Yes? MRS. GALLEGOS: I also have -- I don't know if it's a statement or comment. But the parking lot, the gates that were installed are inferior compared to the ones that are in our old parking lot; the grade, the metal, whatever they use. And those gates are warped. And so someone needs to take a look at those, whoever did that project. We're having problems with those gates. The wheels are falling off. MR. BURGESS: So we need to repair the gates to it? Do we have somebody from transit or transportation here? All right. We'll take a note of that. MRS. GALLEGOS: Mr. Owens is aware of the situation. MR. BURGESS: Now, is this the gates to the east parking lot or both of them, Sandra? MRS. GALLEGOS: Yeah, the new parking lot. MR. BURGESS: The new parking lot? Okay. MRS. GALLEGOS: The grade of metal, you can tell, is different than what is on the old one and it's not as sturdy. The gates are real flimsy and the wheels have fallen off, a couple of them. MR. BURGESS: Okay. Well, if Mr. Owens is aware of that, when he returns from the funerals -- MRS. GALLEGOS: You might remind him. MR. TIPPECONNIE: We will. MR. BURGESS: We will. MR. HENSON: I make a motion to withdraw 74-10 and change it to 75-10. MR. BURGESS: The motion is to approve Resolution 75-10. Do we have a second? MR. TIPPECONNIE: I second. MR. BURGESS: Second by Mr. Tippeconnie here. All those in favor signify by saying "aye." (Aye.) MR. BURGESS: All those opposed, same sign. All those abstain, same sign. The ayes have it. Gentlemen, in my resolution it reads 74-10. This is the application for Injury Prevention grant. MR. TIPPECONNIE: No, it can't be 73-10. We had 73-10 already. MR. BURGESS: This is the resolution to approve monies. We've applied to health and human services for a maximum $240,000 over a four- year period to conduct Injury Prevention program's services to the community. MR. HENSON: I make a motion we approve that. MR. BURGESS: Motion made by Mr. Henson to approve this resolution to health and human services. Second? MR. TIPPECONNIE: I second it. MR. BURGESS: Second by Mr. Tippeconnie. All those in favor signify by saying "aye." (Aye.) MR. BURGESS: All those opposed, same sign. All those abstain, same sign. Resolution 76-10, our transportation department is going to enter into a 93-638 contract with the BIA for a visitors' center access road. This is BIA Southern Plains Regional Office. We don't have a total price on this contract, but the Bureau is going to give us funding for it. MR. NARCOMEY: That's the road in front of the casino, right? MR. BURGESS: Yes. MR. NARCOMEY: The Lawton casino? MR. HENSON: It will go all the way to Lee Boulevard. MR. NARCOMEY: I make a motion to approve. It's not going to cost us anything? MR. HENSON: No, all that money comes from the Bureau. I second it. MR. BURGESS: Motion by Mr. Henson, second by Clyde. Is that all right, Clyde? MR. NARCOMEY: Yeah. MR. BURGESS: Both you guys. All those in favor signify by saying "aye." (Aye.) MR. BURGESS: All those opposed, same sign. All those abstain, same sign. Resolution 77-10, this is the return of property south of Lawton from the -- from title of the Comanche Nation Enterprises back to the Comanche Nation itself. It comes back under the direct ownership of the CBC and the nation. So this resolution approves a transfer back to the nation of this approximate 157 acres, which is about, oh, two-and-a-half miles south of 58th Street off of Lee. So I need the motion to approve the transfer back to us. MR. NARCOMEY: Mr. Chairman, I think we ought to table this. It's $450,000. Where are we going to get the money to pay for it? MR. TIPPECONNIE: It's already been -- it's been paid for. MR. HENSON: It's already paid for. MR. NARCOMEY: It's already paid? MR. TIPPECONNIE: Yeah. MR. NARCOMEY: We all know the history behind that, right? MR. TIPPECONNIE: Some component, there was a small acreage. This was housing. Not the full tract, but the small piece. MR. NARCOMEY: So this thing ain't going to cost us nothing? MR. HENSON: No, it's already been paid for. MR. BURGESS: Jim or Bill, William, do you have a history of that, the transfer from housing? It didn't come from housing to us. MR. TIPPECONNIE: No. MR. BURGESS: The tribe transferred it directly? MR. NORMAN: The tribe purchased it in the name of the enterprise so you'd have flexibility with the overall use of it, and this would propose to transfer title back to the nation proper. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: How many acres? MR. BURSON: Approximately 150. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: Trust land? MR. BURSON: No, fee. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: Fee land? Do you know the taxation on that? MR. TIPPECONNIE: We haven't received a bill. The county, usually, when it's in our name, doesn't seem to be taxing it. Sometimes they'll tax us up front and then they return that tax. MR. BURGESS: So it's just a transfer of title, Clyde. No money going out anymore. MR. KOSECHEQUETAH: And I understand we have an interest to lease this already. MR. BURGESS: We have it leased already, a grazing lease on it, and it helps the nation cut down on vandalism. And the lessor will have repair responsibilities for the fence and gates. MR. REDELK: William, on this property, if we move it back under the nation, what can we do with that property? MR. NORMAN: Well, the nation can develop itself. One limitation on moving it back under the title of the nation is that you will have -- there will be a question about whether or not you can sell the property in the future. You can develop it -- you can lease it, you can develop it for you own benefit, but there's a federal law that requires specific Congressional approval for a nation that owns property, even fee property, to sell it, unless your federal charter has -- the Secretary of Interior had the authority to grant you additional rights. That's why it was originally placed in the name of the enterprise, because they had the authority, potentially, to sell it. The nation will not have authority to sell it without specific Congressional approval, but they won't have other limitations on it. MR. REDELK: What was the reason for the corporation moving it back to the nation? MR. NORMAN: I have no idea. MR. TIPPECONNIE: The corporation says they have evaluated the land and the potential use of it under their priorities and under their vision and mission at the moment and it doesn't fit. Sir? MR. GOODIN: Does this property have utilities? Has it got water lines, sewer lines, or is that something that's coming down the road? MR. TIPPECONNIE: It's coming down the road. MR. BURGESS: We don't have a sewer line or water line on it now, but all the property around us to the west, north, and east have been purchased by other homesite development companies. So potentially there will be water and sewer line from the city coming that way. The rural homes in that area, I believe, are on their own well, or probably from the east side. West side of the near highway going to Chattanooga, they may have sewer lines from county. MR. TIPPECONNIE: And there was a small well on it. MR. BURGESS: The property has water. There was a well that was utilized for the golf course. The well is fairly shallow and there's potentially more, a better aquifer about another 300 foot down. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: Mr. Chairman, wasn't there some discussion that, in the future, because of the growth of the Comanche Nation Fair that it might be moved there temporarily? MR. BURGESS: Well, I think that future is five or 10 years down the road. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: Okay, very good. MR. BURGESS: Because of the remoteness, the lack of access to sewer, water for showers, electrical. We would have to pay a premium price to put all that in on our own. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: Understood. MR. KOSECHEQUETAH: I don't see a representative from the enterprise here, but did they give any reason for why they're just going to transfer it out? It seems as though they're developing in that area. They could turn a profit at some point on the land. Did they give reason? MR. TIPPECONNIE: Yes, they gave reasons. Again, it just didn't fit. They evaluated the potential of the site. Some of the things for consideration on the shorelines, it's a very, very expensive outlay of monies. It cost a lot of money, unless the city begins to approach it. What's happening in the city and the county here, those users have to pay those fees. They have to pay those lines. And it's very expensive. They said it's too expensive to bring lines down at the moment. It just doesn't fit. They don't see it as fitting even long range in their program. MR. NARCOMEY: So they're the professionals and they want to turn it over to us. The professionals can't do nothing with it, but they want to turn it over to us. MR. TIPPECONNIE: Well, the nation has to evaluate now. The nation will have to evaluate the potential of it. MR. WHITEWOLF: How did the enterprise get the land? MR. BURGESS: The previous CBC transferred it over to them after purchase. MR. WHITEWOLF: So the tribe purchased the land? MR. BURGESS: That's what I understand. MR. TIPPECONNIE: In the past, the tribe's purchased the land; and as Mr. Norman said here, that it was beneficial to put it under the corporation because there's a lot of options to the corporation. They can buy and sell, all those kind of things. And that's all approved in advance. MR. WHITEWOLF: Those options are gone now? MR. TIPPECONNIE: There still is the option, if the option comes to the nation and the nation wants to sell it, yes. As he said, it can be done. It takes actions of Congress to say an Indian nation can sell that. Congress has put that hold on the tribes to ever selling land. MR. WHITEWOLF: Musical chairs is kind of -- it doesn't sound right. MR. HENSON: Norman, if it -- MR. TIPPECONNIE: Well, what happens here at the moment is, as the corporation suggests to us, you know, when it was in their hands, they didn't have the opportunity to protect it, so there was a lot of vandalism on the site. Now when it returns to us, we have an option. We can put it under this grazing lease, and maybe they could as well, but they're not into grazing leases. They're not into that kind of thing at the moment. We are. We are putting grazing leases or other kinds of leases upon the lands that are in the name of the nation. MR. WHITEWOLF: Well, I don't understand. If, you know, we buy this land and the tribe doesn't even know we own it, and now we gave it away to the enterprise, and now the enterprise is giving it back to us, that's -- that's hard to understand. MR. TIPPECONNIE: Well, the nation does know we own it. The nation purchased it. MR. WHITEWOLF: I didn't know about it. MR. TIPPECONNIE: Oh, excuse me. You mean tribal members didn't know? MR. WHITEWOLF: Excuse me. I thought the nation was tribal members. MR. TIPPECONNIE: Yes, I apologize. What I'm saying is we, represented here, I think most of us, except maybe the new members, had some understanding of that purchase. MR. BURGESS: Mr. Norman will have a statement. MR. NORMAN: When the property originally became available, the members of that board and the CBC got together, felt like it was an opportunity that they didn't want to pass up in terms of acquiring that amount of acreage. Were not sure exactly what the future use of it might be, but wanted to take advantage of the opportunity of acquiring it. They thought the way to have the most flexibility moving forward was to place it in the name of the corporation, because the corporation has that greater flexibility. I can't speak to what the current desire is to place it back to the nation, because you will lose some flexibility for future development for it. But that's the situation. There was an understanding that that would give you the greatest potential in moving forward. At some point when it became valuable or when an opportunity arose to develop it fully, one way or other, either selling it or developing individual parcels or placing a business on it, something like that. MR. HENSON: If we decide to sell that place, can we transfer it back to the corporation? MR. NORMAN: I think you have the potential of ultimately putting clouds on the title if you accept it now and then attempt to transfer it back in the future and then the corporation attempts to sell it to somebody else. Whether or not anybody ultimately has a concern about that or cares about that, I think you would technically have a legal cloud on the title. MR. BURGESS: Mr. Tahkopfer? MR. TAHKOPFER: This appears to me to be a jurisdictional issue. And I'm under the impression -- are we missing something? Because that land is within the meets and boundaries of the 98th Meridian. All land west of that is in our jurisdictional area, original reservations according to the 1865 and 1867 treaties. So I don't see what jurisdiction anybody else has, state or federal government. That's the power that people need to determine that. MR. BURGESS: I think the sticky point is it's not trust property that we've bought back. It's considered non-trust. It's still within our boundaries and we never transferred it to trust status. That's one of the questions on it. MR. CLARK: Just two points. I'm on the enterprise board, and CBC had no input on the purchase of that. It was just purchased by the -- I'm sorry, the enterprise had no input on that. We were just informed that the CBC had purchased it and then put it in our laps. I might add that they spent more or less $10,000 spent on cleaning up environmental issues out there. There was oil spills and other issues out there that had to be taken care of, and that has been done by the enterprise. MR. KOSECHEQUETAH: I'm sorry, it slipped my mind that you would have insight on that. I didn't recognize you on that. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: Clarification, Mr. Chairman. When was this purchased and do we have mineral rights to that fee land? MR. WAHNEE: Surface rights. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: When was the purchase of this? MR. BURGESS: '06, '07. MR. REDELK: No, I was on committee then. It was probably '08. Mr. Chairman, I would like to see us table this for further study. It seems like there's a lot of questions that need to be answered before we make a move on this. MR. BURGESS: Thank you, Mr. RedElk. And the chairman entertains that, because I think sometime in early August we need to meet with the body, Comanche Nation Enterprises, and discuss some potentials that have come to the CBC. We'll just put it that way. Motion to table. Do we have a second? MR. HENSON: Second. MR. TIPPECONNIE: Who made the motion? MR. BURGESS: Mr. RedElk made the motion. MR. TIPPECONNIE: Second by? MR. BURGESS: Clyde was the first. MR. TIPPECONNIE: Okay. MR. ASEPERMY: Mr. Chairman, I believe that the purchase was about two years ago. I think the purchase price was $450,000. The appraisal for that property was $800,000. The people who owned it were almost in a bankruptcy stage and we bought it for half, a little more than half the appraisal price. The initial plan was to maybe move the Comanche Nation Fair out there. That didn't happen. Then we turned it over to the enterprise to develop. They weren't able to fit it into their plan. Now they want to give it back to us. MR. BURGESS: Motion to table has been seconded. Thank you, Lanny. All those in favor signify by saying "aye." (Aye.) MR. BURGESS: All those opposed, same sign. All those abstain, same sign. The ayes have it. Motion tabled. Lanny, we're going to come -- did Ed leave us? MR. ASEPERMY: Yes. MR. BURGESS: We're going to take a brief break here and I'm going to ask Mr. Asepermy to request of anybody he wants to say a prayer on our cake here, give blessings to him and his family and to Ed. Remember them. At this time, Lanny, who would you like to do prayer, pray on our cake? MR. ASEPERMY: Goodness. Mr. Atchavit. MR. ATCHAVIT: (Prayer.) (Break held from 11:00 a.m. to 11:24 a.m.) MR. BURGESS: Ladies and gentlemen, we're resuming the meeting. We're going to resume the meeting. CBC members, point of order. Resolution 78-10 is the one about signatures. We have a resolution before us, 79-10. We also have 78-10. It will now be 79-10. It just says resolution of Comanche Business Committee. Mr. Tippeconnie, would you go over Resolution 78-10 for us? MR. TIPPECONNIE: 78-10 is signature authorities and payments made by the nation, by the Comanche Nation, in performance of payments. Anyway, the resolution reads that it designates the chairman, the vice-chairman, the secretary/ treasurer and the tribal administrator to sign Comanche Nation payment requests. And payments under 2500 will be processed with the original signatures of at least one CBC member listed above and the tribal administrator. Payment requests over 2500 require original signatures of two CBC members, as well as the tribal administrator. So we had acted upon this previously, but we had left off the tribal administrator clearly, so we're putting it so it's clear the tribal administrator is also a signator. MR. BURGESS: Discussion? MR. NARCOMEY: Mr. Secretary/ Treasurer, you've got here listed, it's got in two places it's got listed CBC member listed above for more than 2500. Then down here below here you got two CBC members listed above for less than 2500. Now, the only CBC member listed is you three guys, right? MR. TIPPECONNIE: Yes. MR. NARCOMEY: That way, everybody won't think -- when they see CBC, they'll think all of this bunch. MR. TIPPECONNIE: I make a motion to approve it. MR. BURGESS: Motion made to approve. MR. REDELK: Second. MR. KOSECHEQUETAH: Second. MR. BURGESS: We have a second. Discussion? Gentlemen, I don't believe it's necessary to have a tribal administrator to sign anything over and above $2500. MR. TIPPECONNIE: You'd like to leave him off? MR. BURGESS: I'd like to leave him off. Anything at $2500 and above, those are major purchases. That's a lot of financial responsibility that the CBC needs to be aware of. MR. TIPPECONNIE: But Mr. Chairman, I will suggest to us that they will come likely from persons under supervision of the tribal administrator. MR. BURGESS: That's where he would sign off on the director's line. The originator can be the program supervisor. The tribal administrator would sign off on the director's line because he's directly aware of it. So there's no need for him to be duplicating or if, this person, duplicating signatures on a payment request. MR. TIPPECONNIE: Say that clearly again, please. MR. BURGESS: The three officers or two of the three officers can be signators without the tribal administrator at $2500 or more. I say that because the tribal administrator should always sign off on any payment request, whether it's $50 or $2500, as a director. They are the tribal administrator, they supervise program managers and supervisors first, and they have to be aware the budget is correct. But it's not necessary for the tribal administrator, who is not an elected official, to have final approval over larger sums than $2500. MR. KOSECHEQUETAH: So you're saying basically he'll be the signature involved with that which he has authority over, and for land purchase or other things that don't pertain to his authority, would only require two signatures of the business committee? MR. BURGESS: Yes. MR. TIPPECONNIE: So we would amend this, then. You're asking, since we made a motion on it, to amend it to exclude that above -- subtract the TA? MR. BURGESS: Yes. MR. TIPPECONNIE: I go along with that. We can just -- MR. BURGESS: As it is now? MS. HENDRIX: So will he not see anything over $2500 then, and then y'all would sign it? MR. BURGESS: He would see every payment request, because he would sign off on the payment request where it says director. That would be the signature line for he or she to sign it. Because they have to be aware of it, yes. But the situation comes up that the tribal administrator is not an elected official in the constitution. The CBC are responsible for expending tribal funds. It says CBC in the constitution. MRS. HENDRIX: Right, but he is an elected official. MR. BURGESS: Mr. Norman, do you have a statement? MR. NORMAN: The fourth "whereas" clause needs to be a "now therefore." That's the substantive -- MR. TIPPECONNIE: Yes, now therefore. MR. NORMAN: It sounds like, based upon your discussion, that if you're in agreement, you would then delete the last four words of the resolution or of that paragraph. MR. BURGESS: Where the word "and," put a period there? MR. TIPPECONNIE: After above -- I mean following above? MS. HENDRIX: Can you give us the name of the three CBC that will be signing and the TA that will be signing? MR. BURGESS: Not the names. It says here positions, because elected officials change. Yes, Thomas. MR. TOM NARCOMEY: What about bonding requirement like whoever signs checks or payment vouchers, maybe directors and -- well, maybe the attorneys can research that out for us and see if we have -- what we could do, you know, safeguard our funds. Whoever signs the check, they should be bonded. I would think. MR. WHITEWOLF: That's a good suggestion. MR. NORMAN: Insurance. MR. BURGESS: Our insurance policy covers that? MR. NORMAN: I believe the nation has insurance coverage that usually covers bonding requirement. MR. TOM NARCOMEY: I don't know how much it is or whether we should get more, because we deal with a lot of money, especially gaming. MR. BURGESS: You say it should go from 1 million to approximately 2 or 3 million, insurance? MR. TOM NARCOMEY: We should buy some more. Just brought up just in case. We could look at it. MR. TIPPECONNIE: I'll make a note to look at that. MR. BURGESS: We'll look at the insurance clause, maybe raising that. I don't know that a bonding requirement is required if we're protected by insurance. We'll look at that and then we'll come back at the next meeting. Nonetheless, this resolution as presented, 78-10, and amended. MR. TOM NARCOMEY: A lot of programs have their own checkbooks. MR. BURGESS: A lot of that has been withdrawn. We've tried to consolidate and make aware that everything's coming through the nation. MR. TOM NARCOMEY: They did have. MR. BURGESS: They did have that, you know, at one point in time; and maybe that was a necessity, but it's not a necessity now. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: Mr. Chairman, for information of this CBC and also for the audience, we're going to be discussing later on in the agenda the role of the TA, so hold onto your seats. MS. HENDRIX: Well, hasn't the role been dictated by the general council? MR. BURGESS: Excuse me, we have a motion and a second on the floor. Let's take care of this business. MR. TIPPECONNIE: Yes, I accept the amendment. I made the motion. MR. BURGESS: So the motion's been made. Will you accept the amendment to that motion on the language correction? MR. KOSECHEQUETAH: Yes. MR. BURGESS: All right. Everybody's got that motion down and changes to it, gentlemen? All right. All those in favor signify by saying "aye." (Aye.) MR. BURGESS: All those opposed, same sign. MR. NARCOMEY: Nay. MR. BURGESS: All those abstain, same sign. Okay, gentlemen, we're going over here to another new resolution. MR. TIPPECONNIE: 79. MR. BURGESS: 79-10. Starting with the second "whereas". It says, "Article IV, Organization Officers, Section 3: Elected officers of the tribal council shall be a tribal chairman, a tribal vice-chairman, a tribal secretary/treasurer. In addition, these officers shall serve in the same capacity on the Comanche Business Committee." I wish we would have had this earlier. "Whereas Article VI, Business Committee, Section 7: The duties, responsibilities, and authorities of the business committee shall include the following: Establish, maintain tribal membership; determine qualifications of candidates for office; execute leases and contracts; develop annual budgets for financing of tribal operations; develop proposals in the best interest of the tribal organization; implement, administer and report on progress of programs; appoint said subcommittees as needed; secure an audit of each year's physical activities; such additional duties and responsibilities which may be assigned to the business committee by the tribal council; promulgate and enforce ordinances and codes governing law and order, peace, health, safety and general welfare on land determined to be within Comanche tribal jurisdiction. "Now therefore be it resolved that the elected Comanche Business Committee come to adherence to the duties of the office that they swore to uphold. A tribal-council hired administrator of management of the Comanche Nation is the single authority of all daily operations of tribal government with oversight and direction of a legal quorum of elected CBC members." That's Constitution Article V, Section 9. "Be it further resolved, BIA 93-638 project, Comanche Nation Law Enforcement program, be under the direction of the tribal administrator/manager of the Comanche Nation come to compliance with CFR Title 25, Chapters 14 and 30. Come to compliance in chain of command and adopt a legal -- political ramifications, cohersion, documented legal precedent with docket number confirms justification." I'm not aware of this Docket Number HD-ISDA 98-1. Can somebody explain that? I don't know everything. Mr. RedElk, you proposed this resolution. MR. REDELK: Yes. I am not clear on that. But what I am clear on is that the police department is Public Law 93-638. And all other programs under this Self-Determination Act is administered and oversight is by the tribal administrator, and this program has not been and I think it should be. MR. BURGESS: I didn't bring my annual budget with me. Chief Griffin, how much funds do you see receive from the nation itself, our coffers and not BIA? MR. GRIFFIN: One million. MR. BURGESS: How much do you receive from the Department of Justice not BIA? MR. GRIFFIN: 275,000. MR. BURGESS: And BIA? MR. GRIFFIN: That's it. 275,000 on the 638 contract. Now, we did get some different pass-through money this year that took us up to 400,000, but that's because we had previous appointments. MR. BURGESS: Are you receiving any other grants that are pursuant to law enforcement that are not through BIA 638 process? MR. GRIFFIN: We received one, it was 125,000, from tribal resources. MR. BURGESS: Now you're seeking funding for other, I'm going to use the word abatement issues of drug and alcohol? MR. GRIFFIN: That's correct. MR. BURGESS: And how much would that be if received? MR. GRIFFIN: If all were received, it would be about $300,000. MR. BURGESS: Mr. RedElk? MR. HENSON: Norman, do you know anything about this docket? MR. NORMAN: No, I do not. MR. HENSON: Do you, Vern? MR. GRIFFIN: No, sir. MR. HENSON: I don't know a thing about it either. MR. BURGESS: Mr. RedElk, we currently receive -- the tribe itself is funding the police department to $1 million. That's non-638 funds. In addition to that, any new grants that we're going to receive are an approximate 400,000 plus dollars. We clearly put more money into our law enforcement program than the BIA does. I'm not aware that we need to subject our monies to the requirement of BIA 638. And I do not believe that the tribal administrator, who has a large, large bucket of responsibilities, is clearly the authority to tell the law enforcement what their duties could be. They know their daily operations and daily paperwork. But when it comes down to legal matters that come before the nation, the TA, whoever it is, is not empowered to conduct that legal operation, to say move forward with any legal investigation. The CBC, the legal authority of the nation, has that overriding responsibility. To say that law enforcement's under the direction of TA for anything that comes of a legal matter I believe impinges the CBC's authority. MR. REDELK: The tribal administrator is charged with the daily operations of the nation, and law enforcement program is an ongoing daily operation. And, therefore, I feel that this is the proper thing to do. I feel like if we receive any amount of 638 monies, that we should adhere to what has been the practice of the other 638 grant monies and be under the authority of the TA. We also have authority of supervision as the CBC over the TA, and it should be in that order. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: Mr. Chairman, I would add to Article V, Section 9 of the constitution. It talks about the CBC controlling the administrator and the manager. I agree that this should be the way Mr. RedElk says. I concur with him on this. And I believe the CBC cannot be in the business of micromanaging day-to-day affairs. I would delegate it to the TA to do this. MR. BURGESS: I think that, gentlemen, I think that you do have a statement there about micromanagement, which is erroneous. Number 2, the legal authority -- and when you said past practice, Mr. RedElk, since the year 2004, law enforcement had been under the direction of the CBC and the tribal chairman. That's the past practice. I do not understand if BIA ever wrote the tribe up or said that we were out of compliance, because clearly one-fourth of our funding comes from BIA. The reason we get that funding -- Mr. Norman or Mr. Griffin can correct me -- is that in order to have our own law program, we had to contract it out. That's why we did it. And that law enforcement should report to the legal entities. Now payment requests, personnel hiring, travel requests, reimbursement requests, those are daily functions, correct. They do go to the tribal administrator's office for signature and approval. But when it comes down to it, who's going to authorize them to go ahead and make those legal arrests and search? Efforts like that can not come under the tribal administrator. Those are the legal requirements the CBC is empowered to handle. You quoted the section here, Article VI, Section 7. MR. WHITEWOLF: Well, Mike, are you saying that the CBC orders the law enforcement to make arrests? MR. BURGESS: No, they inform us the legal responsibilities. We don't order them, they follow the law. But if there's a question to that law pertaining to it, if they do something outside the scope of it, the tribal administrator is not the legal responsibility to say you can do this or can't do that, or how it's going to reflect on the tribe itself. MR. WHITEWOLF: Well, seriously, who should be over the law enforcement? MR. BURGESS: The CBC from the chairman's office, as the past practice has been. MR. WHITEWOLF: That's true, but the CBC can't give direction real quick because they're not seated. They're not seated 30 days a month. And the CBC can only direct when they come from a legitimate collection of votes. MR. BURGESS: There is guidance in the law itself how the chief can respond to certain issues. There's responsibilities he would follow that he makes us aware of if it's going to have legal ramifications on the CBC and the tribe. He comes to us and lets us know. MR. WHITEWOLF: I can see where this idea is coming from, because the chief of police, you know, he -- the police -- not chief of police, but the police are at the whim of the -- at the general council. I've seen the police under the direction of the CBC or the chairman. They jump whenever the chairman says hey, come and remove this guy for talking too loud. So I think that -- I'm more comfortable with the tribal administrator handling the direction than the chief of police. MR. BURGESS: Well, I'm not. Excuse me. MR. WHITEWOLF: That's my reason. MR. HENSON: Can I make a motion here to table this until we find out what this docket is? MR. NELSON: I do have that information. I am a Comanche Nation member. And William and Jim, that was 1998 that Judge Ray made a decision with this tribe where we had one chairman had his own police force, an acting chairman had his other police force, and we had civil war. He had a decision that day. He said this is all wrong. So that's what it was. MR. BURGESS: 1998? We had two chairmen and two TAs or what? MR. NELSON: No, you had two police forces. Is Keith Yackeyonny here? He could fill us all in on it. But that was the ruling from Judge Ray. I do know about the case. MR. BURGESS: Motion to table. And those events and activities are long gone. MR. REDELK: I call for the question. I think we need a vote on it today. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: I second this motion. MR. BURGESS: Discussion? Thomas? MR. TOM NARCOMEY: I don't know if this has anything to do with it, but I don't know if we have our own law and order codes, but maybe we could put something in there that, you know, with the procedures down in there. I don't know, just an idea. But I don't think we have our law and order codes, but we need them so we can enforce our own law. MR. BURGESS: Correct. Mr. Griffin, do you have a response? We're open for discussion here since there's a motion made and we have a second. MR. GRIFFIN: I've been with the police department since 2000. We've been in both locations: We've been under the tribal administrator and we've been underneath the chairman. My guidance under our current 638 contract doesn't specify who has day-to-day operational control over us. It says we have to follow all policies and procedures. It also gives us a second layer of policy and procedures to follow, which the Bureau dictates. So as long as we follow those two guidelines, then we'll be well within the standard of the 638 contract. This is a matter between the CBC and the TA's office to determine where we're at. MR. TOM NARCOMEY: Under the Department of Justice Reorganization Act, I believe it was 2004, they want all. What he was talking about codes and ordinances to be fulfilled by a nation. It does come to a resolution, just like this. MS. HALL: Mr. Chairman, I speak in favor of the motion of Mr. RedElk and I'll tell you why. I think in any proper government, there has to be a separation here. There has to be. And I look back and we say 1998. However, I want to remind everyone here, and I will refer to Chief Anderson's situation, we saw what folly happens when one man speaking for all the CBC can control law enforcement. That was just a small hint. There is a situation that should set a precedence. I don't care if it's $1 that law enforcement accepts from 638. To the government, it does not matter. You accept it, we have set a precedence here. All 638 monies will come under the TA. There must be separation, there must be, so that we make sure there are checks and balances; that we uphold the constitution; that we afford due process to all members; that somebody can't stand up there and say, I want that Comanche tribal member, that full-blooded tribal member or that one-eighth tribal member, to be forcefully removed from any meeting. Any time someone has that much authority to take away my right to participate. Whether or not I agree with the outcome does not matter. My grandparents gave me that right. That constitution gives all of us that right. We cannot allow dictatorial situations. We cannot. I want the right to speak. I allow these gentleman -- I vote, we vote, we give them power. We give them the authority to act on our behalf. But we have a right, we have a right. And my law enforcement, I expect the law enforcement to protect my right. Not just these gentlemen's rights up here, my rights. You don't ask a tribal member to leave. You don't forcefully threaten someone to be removed. Protect my rights, too. The attorneys, I'm angry with them. You're here to protect my rights. The students came to you. MR. BURGESS: You're going beyond the scope of the discussion. MS. HALL: Yes, I am, because it goes throughout this government. MR. WHITEWOLF: She has a right to speak. MS. HALL: It goes throughout this government. You have got to separate yourself from a dictatorial situation. MR. BURGESS: Then speak to this issue. MS. HALL: It's a democracy. I have a right to speak. Thank you, sir. I have a right to speak. I speak in favor of this. I think everyone here needs to look beyond what's being presented. We saw a situation happen when one person can dictate to law enforcement, and that is not right. Every tribal member's rights -- just because we're Comanche tribal members doesn't mean -- and whether we're employees or not, we don't give up our rights to due process or to be treated fairly. No one has that right. You should be up there upholding it, not standing against us. MR. BURGESS: Thank you. We're not standing against you. There are many issues and concerns you're not aware of. That's why I have my opinion. Yes? MS. MCDANIEL: Yes. Eleanor McDaniel. I think that it comes down to oversight. You know, you have your responsibility -- duties and responsibilities as CBC, and one of them is to promulgate and enforce laws. So oversight means that if the TA is responsible for law enforcement, you can oversee what he is doing as being responsible for law enforcement. The CBC can oversee what he is doing. But if it comes under the CBC and you dictate what happens, who's going to oversee what you do? MR. BURGESS: Thank you. Vern, did you have a comment on this issue? BIA funding -- I have a question. If all we're receiving from BIA is 275,000, do we need to receive their money to take on our law enforcement responsibilities? MR. GRIFFIN: Yes, sir. MR. BURGESS: Even though we give $1 million plus other funding? MR. GRIFFIN: Yes, sir. MR. BURGESS: So this issue, ladies and gentlemen, talked about two opposing law enforcement areas, the time Yackeyonny and McClung were on the CBC. That dispute arose over who had authority to tell what law enforcement what to do. That was a time of turmoil, a time of hard unrest, internal discussions, and so they referred to the CFR for this issue to clarify. We are not in that issue now. We don't have two law enforcements. We're not at each other's throats over there. I think we've outgrown that. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Not yet. MR. BURGESS: We sit here and let you speak, we sit here and we've heard you. We try to follow as best we can the majority vote and issues on concerns. Now, we're hearing from Mr. RedElk, who is a former member, a resolution being proposed to us, and we're just now being informed about the whole idea here, HD-ISDA. But I can tell you, still, I don't think it's necessary. I served as the TA. I never had the time to tell law enforcement on a daily basis what it is or isn't they could do. A TA who wants to step outside and tell every program director on a daily basis how to do their job, what not to do about it, that is micromanagement. That's micromanagement. Because directors have been here a long time and you should be trusting of them, you should be encouraging them. And the majority do their jobs. They know their job, they know their grants and contracts. I can say that for the majority of the directors. But to tell them what not to do because you don't want it done or tell them who to hire because you don't like that person, that's micromanaging. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: No, that's being responsible. MR. BURGESS: Whoa, whoa. I'm telling you, I'm speaking from experience. Now, you don't want to hear that, fine. We had a motion on the floor and then we had a counter motion to table this issue until further study. MR. KOSECHEQUETAH: Can I give some comment here? It's a tough one. On one side, the 638 makes sense that the tribal administrator oversee those programs. One thing came to mind: Not too long back we met with the police department and our gaming operations, commission, and board to kind of determine their participation and role in gaming or other tribal lands, and a lot of that doesn't fall under the tribal administrator. So I don't know that I'm saying one way or the other except that there's a broader scope than what it is that the tribal administrator oversees and is involved with. But the police force has a larger area. So I'm really not decided. I wouldn't mind tabling this. I just wanted to give that commentary that that's what was going through my mind. I wouldn't mind hearing what Mr. Tippeconnie and the other guys have to say about it. MR. HENSON: I might add to that one thing: I worked in several different agencies to where the authority that I had in those agencies was to make determinations on things that were wrong, just like a law enforcement officer. And in all three of those agencies, the agencies determined that I answered directly to the highest authority. Now, in the situation that we have here, we have a law enforcement that's in government, but we also have them outside the government in gaming and it's different. From my experience, they should answer to the highest authority because of the responsibility that they have. I would like to table this and discuss it more. MS. MCDANIEL: Yeah, I think you need to table it. Because you're political people there, and we don't need political thugs. MR. REDELK: Mr. Chairman, I've got -- UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Let's not be disrespectful. My goodness, that's the problem. MR. REDELK: I would like to ask Mr. Henson this: What do you classify as the higher authority in our situation here? MR. HENSON: Well, here, we as the CBC, we have the authority over the gaming commission, we have -- over the economic development, we have authority through supervising the TA. So I'm not really in favor of saying that CBC should be the higher authority, but that's where it lies. MR. REDELK: You're classifying CBC as a seven-member board or are you classifying CBC -- MR. HENSON: Seven-member board, yes. And that's another thing I might say to y'all. What's happened in the past about how previous chairmen and that and the authority they had and what they did, it's not like that anymore. The decisions that are made is made here as a CBC now. It's not one individual with all the authority. If a decision is made, then the CBC is brought in and that decision is made. One guy does not have all the authority. I've been hearing all the time since I've been in here that the chairman did this, the chairman did that; he had the authority to do this, he had the authority to do that. Well, it's not so. MR. WHITEWOLF: I thought you was the one that furloughed the tribal administrator. That's one person. MR. BURGESS: Let's stick to the issue, the subject matter, please. We have a discussion going on on this resolution. Let's stick to the resolution. Your comments about something else, you can hold them. MR. WHITEWOLF: This is related. MR. HENSON: Let me answer that. I'll answer it very quickly. I did do that. Yes, I did. MR. WHITEWOLF: One man, right? MR. HENSON: Yes, but I called the rest of them in, they couldn't make it. It was a decision that had to be made at the moment. MR. WHITEWOLF: You swear on the Bible you did that? MR. HENSON: Did what? MR. WHITEWOLF: Do you swear on the Bible you did that? MR. HENSON: Did what? MR. WHITEWOLF: Called every person that were CBC? MR. HENSON: The ones that were here in town, yes. And I had Nicole -- she can sit over there and verify what I'm saying is true, because she did the calling, too. I couldn't get ahold of them. The only one got ahold of was Clyde. She couldn't get ahold of the rest of them, I couldn't get ahold of them. I had the wrong number on one of them. But that was done. And then we got -- we had to deal with the police department in a situation, a decision had to be made. That decision was made, but the next day the CBC got together and they backed that decision that was made. So it was just an emergency situation that was done and it was backed by the CBC. MS. HENDRIX: The memo that Mike put out said you did it and he didn't say anything about the CBC backing you up. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: It sounds like you don't have any trust in your law enforcement. And if an emergency came up, just like he was saying, who knows better of what's going on, the law enforcement officer or CBC? I don't think any of you guys are trained in law enforcement, or are you? MR. BURGESS: Neither is the tribal administrator. It generally don't come from law enforcement. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: What if a situation happened like he said and nobody could get in touch with y'all? That decision lies with law enforcement. MR. BURGESS: Well, law enforcement then reports to the CBC. Whoever is here, to the three officers. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: After the fact. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: I want to say this: I was elected to office to represent the people. What I was hearing on the campaign was you want more accountability rather than consolidation of power, you want transparency. I believe we should stay out of micromanaging. This is micromanaging government. I believe it should be left with a neutral person and I believe we should have a call for the vote. MR. BURGESS: I think you should hold that last statement there. We do have a different session we're going to go into Mr. Wauahdooah and Mr. RedElk, so I would respectfully ask that you table this until you get further information. MR. REDELK: I would like to see that it goes to a vote and see if we've got the membership on this committee to approve it or disapprove it. I think it's important enough an issue that it happen or it not happen. MS. HENDRIX: Take care of it now. MR. WHITEWOLF: It is a motion. MR. BURGESS: And then there was a counter motion to table it. MR. HENSON: No, I made the motion before they made the motion. MR. BURGESS: You made yours first to table it? MR. HENSON: Yeah, we've got to do away with my motion first. MR. BURGESS: We have a motion on the floor to table this item for further study. We need a second. MR. BURSON: The motion to table supercedes all other motions. MR. BURGESS: Correct. MR. BURSON: You have to deal with the motion on the table first. MR. BURGESS: We have a motion to table this by Mr. Henson. Do we have a second? I'll second. Motion to table by Mr. Henson. MS. HALL: The chairman cannot -- isn't that point of order? Can a chairman second a motion? Just a question. MR. BURGESS: Thank you. I second the motion. MS. HALL: I still stand. Out of order. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: Is that correct, Mr. Chairman? MR. BURSON: Chairman, I have in my notes that Mr. Henson seconded that motion earlier. MR. BURGESS: He made the motion to table. MR. HENSON: I made the motion to table. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: The question remains. The chairman, can he second it acting as the neutral party here? Unless there's a tie, he cannot vote. MR. WHITEWOLF: He can only break a tie. MR. NORMAN: That is not correct in terms of his voting. He can vote to make a tie or he can vote to break a tie. Historically, the chairmen have not seconded motions. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: So we're breaking precedence here. MR. WHITEWOLF: They're paid to give opinion. MR. NORMAN: That's not consistent with what has been the practice. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: So it should not be done then. MR. BURGESS: Call for a second on this motion to table. MS. HENDRIX: Was there a second on the motion to approve it? MR. BURGESS: Calling for a second on this motion to table this issue until further study. Darrell, do you want to second it? You have some concerns anyway. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: I think it's time to move on, Mr. Chairman, with the vote. MR. BURGESS: We have a motion to table. We need a second. Third call. MR. KOSECHEQUETAH: I will second based on the points that -- MR. BURGESS: We have a motion to -- have a second to this motion to table this resolution for further study. The comment came from the community, as well, that Mr. RedElk and Mr. Wauahdooah are not totally aware of the circumstances and neither is the community about this whole issue. MR. KOSECHEQUETAH: There's ability to abuse power in either position and we're just trying to figure out what the best place for it is concerning the nation as a whole. MR. NARCOMEY: Mr. Chairman, maybe by the next month, whenever we look at this again, maybe the police force or whoever can find out the other tribes that have police departments, let's find out who they're under. Just for informational of if they're under the chairman or they're under the TA. MR. REDELK: Chairman, now that it has been seconded, we have to vote to approve that. We haven't voted to approve that yet, and I'm hoping that there's support here that won't approve it and we can go ahead and vote for it. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: Amen. MR. BURGESS: And there's time for discussion, and Mr. Narcomey had a very good point. And that hadn't been done prior to this resolution being brought. MR. REDELK: I don't disagree with you. MR. BURGESS: Okay. I mean, your first day in here and you bring a resolution without prior study, and you couldn't tell us what HD-ISDA was. So I think it's very prudent upon us to do that study. So call for the question here. We have a motion and a second. MR. TIPPECONNIE: Could I make a comment? MR. BURGESS: Okay. MR. TIPPECONNIE: You know, one thing I might say -- and I'm not trying to say we're like the BIA or we're like the Bureau of Land Management or we're like the U.S. Forest Service. But a lot of those agencies were directed to stovepipe, if you know what stovepipe means. They were directed to take away the authority from the local agency and have the authority given to the highest level, which was central offices, so to speak, or high-level offices. Well, right now, many Indian nations are challenging that when it comes to the activity in the BIA, because your local officials, the superintendents, even the regional directors, they don't have the authority to work with law enforcement. Law enforcement reports upward. So now tribes are suggesting to the BIA and to the Secretary of Interior to delegate that back down, because they feel that local officer, in this case a superintendent of an agency or a regional director, has more knowledge of activities and programs than someone that's sitting in Washington, D.C. Or, in some cases, it's been moved to places like Albuquerque as their central office. I just want to bring that up. So given this, when what you're all talking about, I appreciate your comments myself, and I appreciate Darrell bringing up a point. You know, there is a conflict in some of our minds right now, I have admit to that. You know, I feel it's very smart that the tribal administrator basically supervise ongoing programs. I think it's very smart. The tribal administrator and I have had a great relationship in working on things and we see merit to that. And so I can see that. But I also see the point that Darrell brought out that, you know, there are occasions when we have to visit outside places of the role of the tribal administrator. And then how is that relationship with law enforcement? It's a separate relationship. There's two different ways that business is conducted. So I have to say, you know, I'm still thinking here about what is smart here. I support, most of the time, the tribal administrator having this kind of authority, even law enforcement. One thing that comes to my mind, I have to say to you all, CBC has these authorities. They were read to you, some of them. But CBC is not a body that can sit here and direct programs day to day. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: Amen, brother. MR. TIPPECONNIE: That's not a role of CBC. And I'm very cautious on that. I don't get into that. If you look in the constitution, the secretary/treasurer has a responsibility, a fiduciary responsibility. Has the responsibility on budgets and financials, et cetera. That's where I get myself involved on occasion with the TA and directors. But outside that, it's the TA's responsibility, not mine, or not the CBC. So we have to be very cautious that we are not stepping into a separate role. But we have an overall role on policies and procedures. And the TA has to come to us and convey to us, you know, what's happening and what's not happening. If we -- as an example that comes to my head, you know, if the law enforcement were under the TA, I would expect the TA to guide the activity day-to-day of law enforcement. But then when it gets into some issues outside that, that's not the role. He'll have to convey to the CBC, "Look, CBC, you have to handle this. It's within your role." So I can see two things here. Anyway, it's a little confusing to me yet to say yes or no to it. I have to be honest with you. I'm a person that likes to have a lot of substance, has a lot of reflection on something, and to be very smart about it, and to be smart about it in the interest of the tribal members. Not to me, but the tribal members and the activity that goes on for tribal members. Well, so I would say there's still questions like Darrell has in his head. There's two things that we have to think about. And I really think it's worthy, then, you know, Mr. RedElk, in my own mind, to go ahead with this vote. But I think there's time to pause and think on it a little more, too. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: Mr. Tippeconnie, you know, the Lords of the Plains is not a hallowed name. These people were decisive traditionally and historically. And we just can't be heeing and hawing indefinitely. I just want to say the reason why I was elected was for transparency. And there's a prophetic word in the Bible from Luke, Chapter 12, verses 2 and 3. It says, "There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, and neither hid that shall not be known. Therefore, whatsoever you have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light, and that which you have spoken in the ear in the closet shall be proclaimed upon the house tops." We need to, collectively as a CBC, need to be very transparent and very forthright. I believe the people want us not micromanaging, they want not a consolidation of power, and that the TA is an efficient way to do it. MR. BURGESS: I agree with you that there's a TA in our business, and I can disagree with you on the interpretation of micromanagement from what side of the table you're hearing it. As we're saying to you, there's further information you're not aware of, because by law, we can't disclose it. We're dealing with an employee issue when you come into that subject. By law, we can't disclose anything. Someone else can go out there and say all they want to say and paint the picture. By law, we have to sit here and be mute until you're aware of the issues. MR. WAUAHDOOAH:I'm not talking personality, I'm just talking office to office. MR. BURGESS: That's what I'm talking to you. That's why I'm encouraging you to wait until you hear the subject matter. Don't -- we're not purposely being non-transparent, but this is a big issue, and it deserves further study. And let's take examples from elsewhere. That's prudent upon us if we're going to do the smart thing. MRS. HENDRIX: You just told Carlotta not to get on another issue and now you are. This is a different issue. MR. BURGESS: I'm on the issue of this resolution and why law enforcement shouldn't be under one individual. MS. HENDRIX: But you're referring to something later. MR. BURGESS: I'm referring to this subject. Thank you. Now, call for the question. We have a second to table this by Mr. Darrell Kosechequetah. All those in favor signify by saying "aye." (Aye.) MR. NARCOMEY: This is to table? MR. BURGESS: This is to table, motion to table. MR. TIPPECONNIE: Are you voting? MR. NARCOMEY: Aye. MR. BURGESS: All those opposed, say "nay". MR. REDELK: Nay. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: Nay. MR. BURGESS: Four to two to table. Motion to table until further study. Mr. Griffin and Mr. Norman, if y'all would research some other tribes and see how this issue is handled. Based on what we've been given -- I think you have a copy of that document, HD whatever it is. It spoke to a time that the nation was in turmoil, approximately 11 years ago. Mr. Tippeconnie has talked about recent events, changes in attitude of the BIA, and we're looking at a law that's probably well over 20 years old requiring us to do this issue when, in fact, our business has grown and we need more flexibility than what BIA and CFRs are allowed. That's it for resolutions. New business here. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: Mr. Chairman, I make a motion that we move from executive session item Number 2 to make it part of new business. MR. BURGESS: I'm sorry. We've already gone through the agenda. That is a personnel issue, therefore it's in executive session. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: It is an official from the tribal council. From the direction of the CBC, if the individual, if he concurs, I believe it can be brought before the CBC. MR. BURGESS: We are going into new and old business, Mr. Wauahdooah. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: I restate my motion that we change the new business to incorporate the topic Number 2, tribal administrator, into new business as item Number 5. MR. BURGESS: You're wishing to amend the agenda? MR. WAUAHDOOAH: Yes. MR. HENSON: Would you say something on this, Norman? MS. HENDRIX: They're not Comanches. MR. HENSON: No, no, no. Just a minute. There's a lot more information that you don't know about that we can't talk about, and he can address the issue of talking about tribal administrator. You want to address that, Norman? MR. NORMAN: I would just renew our prior recommendation to the CBC that this matter involves potential litigation and we recommend that any discussion take place in executive session. MR. BURGESS: We have some other important items that will take some moments here, so we're going into Section VI, new and old business. MR. NELSON: I'd like to amplify to Mr. Wauahdooah. It's only a statement I want to read. I have not retained a money lawyer. MR. BURGESS: Have you retained counsel free of charge? MR. NELSON: There's a lot of legal fees. MR. BURGESS: Have you retained counsel free of charge? MR. NELSON: This is not a court, sir. MR. BURGESS: I'm just asking. I have a right to know. MR. NELSON: It's not a court, sir. MR. BURGESS: I didn't say it was. MRS. HENDRIX: Why isn't the attorneys representing him? He's elected by the people. MR. BURGESS: We are in Section VI, new and old business. MS. HALL: Out of order, Mr. Chairman. You had a motion on the floor that needs to be addressed. MR. BURGESS: I didn't hear a motion. I had a request -- we are not in that section. He can do it when we come to executive session. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: I made a motion to amend the new business to incorporate Item 2 of executive session. That is my motion. MR. BURGESS: All right. Motion's been made to amend the executive session -- MR. WAUAHDOOAH: Item Number 2. MR. BURGESS: Item Number 1 and 2. Item 2 is tribal administrator -- MR. WAUAHDOOAH: Item Number 5 under new and old business. MR. BURGESS: Item Number 5 under new and old business. Also that motion is to include moving EPA and John Kowena under Item Number 8 into new and old business so Mr. Kowena and his family can -- it's a brief report. MR. NARCOMEY: Mr. Chairman, I have a question here. 1 and 2, new and old business. This Number 3 under Section VI, I'd like to change that to Karl Tahkopfer to replace Indian cemeteries because of the importance of the water, of our water rights, water codes that we're facing now. MR. BURGESS: Okay. MR. NARCOMEY: Thank you. MR. WHITEWOLF: Mike, did you get the water codes, yet? MR. BURGESS: We have a copy of water codes, yes. Motion is to move Item Number 2 to Item Number V. Mr. Wauahdooah's going to address that. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: I believe this -- it's part of transparency of the CBC members. I know this was an individual or individuals hired for one year by the general council to be the TA. And it was a question of whether he was replaced, removed from office discreetly or wrongly. And I believe this should be made open and public simply because you, the people, elected him. Not me, but you the people. So there's no question what was done right, what was done wrong. Granted, this man may be a lot of imperfections in him. There's a lot of imperfections on this side of the fence, too. I just want you guys to be publicly, perfectly open with you. I call for this motion to be passed. MRS. GALLEGOS: I have a statement. If you're going to change the TA position from executive session to new business, is that what you're proposing? MR. WAUAHDOOAH: Yes, ma'am. MRS. GALLEGOS: Then are we going to get to hear all the details of exactly what happened? MR. WAUAHDOOAH:I hope so. You know -- MRS. GALLEGOS: Because we can't just hear the fact that he didn't attain a paid lawyer. We want to know all the -- MR. WAUAHDOOAH: Because this is a very special position. Listen, my friends, when I was -- during the 1970s when I was with the SETA Program (phonetic), there was very little in our executive session. In the last couple five or 10 years, everything's now under executive session, and you guys wonder what is going on up there. The CBC needs to be more open. Granted, there are some labor issues, some confidential stuff, but this is one special area that needs to be exposed. MR. KOSECHEQUETAH: Chairman, do you think it would be wise to have partial in open and partial in executive session? Like we can't discuss or we have not been brought up to speed on certain aspects of this investigation -- MR. BURGESS: That's what I'm trying to tell the new members. That will have to be reserved for executive session. However, if Willie or whoever wants to speak their mind here in the open session, I'm not opposed to hearing that. If that's what Mark -- is that what you're talking about, Mark? MR. WHITEWOLF: Darrell, we would like to know what type of business you're doing for us. MR. KOSECHEQUETAH: We would like to know some things, too, that we haven't been informed about, and that will happen in executive session due to the legal aspects of it. And I know you can understand that. Now, when that comes out in a motion -- no action is taken place in executive session. Never has been. We can't act, we can't perform on behalf of the nation in executive session. It's just to keep us safe as a nation and to keep people and personnel issues safe, we have to discuss. We can't make any decisions in there. We'll come out and we'll discuss that and we'll go into a decision-making process. MR. WHITEWOLF: Executive sessions are supposed to be contracts and employees, that's all. MR. KOSECHEQUETAH: Personnel. MR. BURGESS: Tribal administrator, he's employed. MR. WHITEWOLF: You went and got Codopony, gaming appointments. What's so secret about that? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: If he's employed, is human resources involved? Have they been invited? MR. KOSECHEQUETAH: I don't know who's in executive session. All we know is that it's bound. Like I said, we haven't received all the information yet either. We'll be receiving information in executive session we haven't heard up to this point. MR. BURGESS: Apparently, those individuals requested executive session. MR. NELSON: It was requested for new and old business, sir. MR. WHITEWOLF: Oscar, he thinks he's CIA. MR. BURGESS: Well, I know somebody who thinks they're CSI. MS. MCDANIEL: If the CBC took the action to remove the tribal administrator, then you need to call a tribal council meeting so we can hire a tribal administrator. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: We've got one. MR. HENSON: Let me answer this. The TA has not been removed from his job. He has been put on administrative leave with pay because of the situation, and that's all I can say on that. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Two months for a misdemeanor that's not even a misdemeanor. MR. HENSON: We don't know that. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: There's an acting tribal administrator -- MR. BURGESS: There's a motion on the floor. Ron, are you going to go out or stay in the room? Okay. There's a motion on the floor here presented by Mr. Mark Wauahdooah to let the tribal administrator come before us in the new business section. And then replacing Mrs. Gladys Narcomey as a commentary for Mr. Karl Tahkopfer on the Indian cemeteries. Motion's made by Mr. Wauahdooah. Is there a second? MR. REDELK: I'll second that. MR. BURGESS: Second made by Mr. RedElk. MR. REDELK: The new guy on the block. MR. BURGESS: For the second time here we're going to amend our agenda to allow the tribal administrator -- if he wants to make a statement, that will be up to him, that's item Number 5. MR. NORMAN: You need to take a vote on it. MR. BURGESS: All those in favor signify by saying "aye." (Aye.) MR. BURGESS: All those opposed, same sign. MR. HENSON: Nay. MR. NARCOMEY: Nay. To bring Willie Nelson up here? MR. BURGESS: To bring the tribal administrator out of executive session to -- MR. NARCOMEY: I noticed the lawyer said something to you. You said it's all right for him to say something? MR. BURGESS: They're reviewing the minutes there where the CBC did approve a motion supporting his administrative leave. MR. NARCOMEY: I don't see nothing wrong with that. MR. BURGESS: If he wants to make a statement, that's fine, but we, the CBC, are not to respond to anything that he says here in public. MR. NARCOMEY: Okay. MR. BURGESS: So we're going forward with the vote here. Mr. Narcomey, did you vote yes or no? MR. NARCOMEY: Vote yes. MR. BURGESS: Motion is to amend the agenda to allow the tribal administrator to make a statement to us. MR. HENSON: I change my vote to yes if it's just for him to make a statement. MR. BURGESS: Just leave it that way, because we're not going to respond to anything. We're going to give the floor over to the gaming board from the casino. I think we have two, three, four representatives here. Mr. Chas Robbins and Mr. Sharrod Tabbytite from the gaming board will make a presentation to us, ladies and gentlemen. They have some historical data and some future ideas for us to secure -- or I should say retain our position in earning income from the casinos. MR. TABBYTITE: Good afternoon. I'm Sharrod Tabbytite. I'm a Comanche Nation tribal member and I'm Chief Executive Officer of the gaming operation. I report directly to the gaming board; and the composition of that board is Mrs. Iola Hayden as Chairman, Mr. Jim Patterson is the Vice-Chairman, and Daphne Ticeahkie is a board member. With Me today is Mr. Chas Robbins, Director of Finance. And at the request of the CBC and the board, we're going to give an overview for the proposal to do some construction at the Red River facility. Part of what we're going to show you is the difference that the renovation project at the Lawton casino, what that has made, the improvements it's made in terms of turning things around for that casino. We're hoping to do the same thing at the Red River Casino. As you know, until about three years ago we were in a very unique position, especially with those two larger casinos. We had virtually no competition. In May of 2007, the Kiowas opened up their new, nice casino and we began to feel the effects of that shortly after them doing that as far as downturn in our -- and loss of market share. When the Fort Sill Apaches blew up until December of '08, were sort of an afterthought. They weren't much competition. But in December of '08, they opened up their new, nice casino, and both Kiowas and the Fort Sill Apaches have done a good job with those casinos. What it did to us, though, in the Lawton casino, it affected us dramatically by loss of market share. To compound this, we've had the effects of the general recession. Up until this recession, I guess a number of people, including me, thought that casinos were bullet proof when it came to recession, but that's not the case. We're going to show you a brief slide show, what has happened to CNC since the renovation. We're going to also propose in the second part of this presentation doing something very similar at Red River; that is the construction of a new casino and adding a hotel. We've been working on this for a year, at least. We have interviewed with Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Bank of Oklahoma, and TMC, who are the financiers. We've chosen showed an architect group from Las Vegas to help us put this together, and a construction company, Flintco Construction, to do the -- act as the general contractor. We can -- I guess, two sides of this coin about Red River is we can leave it alone and not do anything and you'll see the effects of that over about a five-year time period, which is a steady decline. Or we can choose to reinvest in that property, to reinvent it and refresh it, and basically it'd be a new property and what the effects of that would likely be. We have analyzed this backwards and forwards for months on end. I'm going to hand it over to Chas now to go over the financial presentations. We'll answer questions and I'll wrap up after he's done with the financial presentation. Thank you. MR. ROBBINS: Thank you. Good morning. Just as an overview of the presentation, I'd like to show some of the things that were market drivers that Mr. Tabbytite spoke to briefly, show some of the market conditions that led to the development that we see at CNC now. We'll show a little bit of the post-renovation results at CNC so that we can see financially how that impacted us. We'll talk a little bit specifically about Red River, their market conditions and maybe some of the steps that are necessary for maintaining the competitive advantage that we've enjoyed at the Red River market before. And then we'll look at some pro forma or some projected financial impacts from those decisions that we can put into place. I'll at that point turn it back over to Mr. Tabbytite. He'll be making a recommendation speaking on behalf of the board of directors, and then we'll wrap up with a summary and see if there are any questions. Let's step back to maybe a year ago. Mr. Tabbytite spoke to December of 2008. We saw the market in the Lawton area change dramatically. Fort Sill Apache, who had historically been a small competitor, started to reinvest in their property, became a bigger player in the market, brought in as many gaming positions, slot machines, as what we have at the Lawton casino. So we now all of a sudden had a real competitor in the market. When we looked at ourselves from an IT perspective, we also did not have a true slot accounting system and we didn't have a system to reward our patrons. A lot of people that like to play, they like to have a Players' Club card and they like to be rewarded for their patronage. They may get some points back that they can use as free play, and they may redeem that for meals at the grill or the restaurant, and that becomes a marketing incentive the casinos use. We didn't have the technology to be able to do that. Our facility itself had some age on it. And we have a lot of traffic in our casinos, which is a good thing, but traffic in a public place starts to make the facility look deteriorated and outdated, so that's where we were from a facility standpoint. All of this had a real implication on our financials. When we looked in December of 2008, our net income at CNC was down 15 percent. So the decisions was made, looking at all of these factors, that change was needed. We had to implement change and we had to do it quickly. So there were two major capital projects that were brought into the fold that were decisions by the gaming board of directors and advised by the CBC that we put into play as soon as possible. One, we were going to address the whole issue of us not having a player tracking or slot accounting system, so we brought in the IGT Advantage System. Went through a very long and arduous request for proposal process, brought in a lot of professionals in the industry to help us make a decision, and we selected the IGT Advantage System. So with that, we now have player tracking, we have the ability to reward players, our top players. We can reward them and entice them to come back into our property more often. And we can now have next-day operating results with our slot accounting system. We don't have to worry about the manual processes of having a room full of people working on a 10-key calculator to show what we had received in revenue the day before, we have realtime information with very little room for error. The ticket in/ticket out capability. How many people like to play and then actually have a handful of tickets, take it out to the cashier and wait for them to run them through the different modules? It takes forever. You can't take those tickets and then put them into another machine. We now have that capability. You can play on one machine, decide to play another and cash out, take your ticket to that machine, or you can take it to a kiosk and get your funds redeemed. So that's been a great technology for us. Some of the bonusing capabilities. These are going to be some of the exciting things that we're going to see rolling out in the next few months, what the system allows us to do. Some great marketing opportunities and it's a lot of fun for the players, so we're excited about that. But the big thing and probably the most noticeable thing, even if you're driving down I-44, is the casino looks different. We have the new look, not just outside but inside. Same building, but you wouldn't think so if you walked through it. It looks completely different. Even the air quality. I'm sure a lot of you probably remember in the older facility, you walked in and the cigarette smoke could almost knock you down sometimes. And when you went home, you could still smell it on yourself. It's tough to get completely rid of cigarette smoke, but we made it where the air quality is much better in there and the guests have really enjoyed that. We also have more gaming machines. We looked to see what our average daily win on a lot of those gaming machines are. We find that there's an optimal number to have at that property. So we've been able to add machines and maximize on our revenue. We've brought in a high- end bar. We have bar top machines now that a lot of the patrons have really enjoyed, and we brought in valet parking Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday evening, which is also an extra amenity. So these are all changes that came about by trying to refresh ourselves and become more aggressive in the market. It's worked. How many of us remember -- I'm still surprised sometimes when I think about the old property, which was great. The old property made a lot of money for the nation and it's something that we should definitely remember and always respect, but we look at the new property now and it's really exciting to see the transformation. What's even more exciting is bottom line numbers. I've presented to the CBC for the past couple of years now and I've learned just go to the bottom line and tell them what the implications are. 15.31 percent above where we were this time last year. Huge, huge turn around. That's the bottom line number. I'm going to bore you just real quick with a graph. If we look at net gaming revenue, this is what the slot machines bring to us after we pay our payouts and we've paid the winners. But if we look at that over time -- so here's net gaming revenue over time. And I look at it over two different 13-month periods. And one 13-month period is the time that we were really starting to see the introduction of new competitors. We were working in the old property. But then when we look at the 13-month period where all of a sudden we have a renovation, we have a new system, this is what's happened to our net gaming revenue. This is the difference between the red line and the white line, is the actual increase. Here, we talked about 15 percent increase in net income. Here, we're talking about 18 and 20 percent increases in net gaming revenue. Extraordinary results we're really proud of. So let's change subjects real quick. We talked about what's happened at CNC. We know that the results have been positive, but we also know that our largest property is Comanche Red River Casino. It's always been, since its inception, has contributed the largest percentage to the nation in distribution. It's had the largest percentage in net income. But we have some market conditions to take into consideration there as well. Similar to CNC, this facility has a lot of traffic. It's starting to show it's age. It's becoming a little more deteriorated each day. Only so much duct tape and then you can start to see the implications. The air quality, particularly on the original side, it's not that great. We're also competing with a newer and nicer facility, and it's not that far away. Next door we've got the Kiowa casino, which Mr. Tabbytite mentioned was opened in May of 2007. The bulk of our patrons come from Texas, so what they typically do is take Exit 1, drive by the Kiowa casino to get to ours. So there's going to be a point where they start asking the question, "Well, why am I driving by this nicer and this newer casino to go to Red River, especially now that they offer Class II games?" When the Kiowas opened, they were strictly a Class III casino. They were kind of looking out for the market and saying things are going to change in Oklahoma. The players are going to be more interested in Class III games. We're not interested in Class II, we're just going to purchase Class III games. Well, we were able to capitalize on that for a while, because we maintained a mixed floor. We had the Vegas-style games, which the market was starting to enjoy, but we also had those good Class II games that we knew were really popular. We lost that competitive edge. We're not the only game in town now that offers the Class II games. We also have some limitations in our food options. We know that the competitor, they have a buffet, they have a sports bar. We have the grill and they make a fantastic burger, but we still have to be able to market to everyone in that area and say come play at our property, let's have a nice meal, earn some points through your play on the machines. We may even be able to get a meal voucher for you if you play enough. But we've got to have a good enough food venue that's going to make them excited about coming. The next big thing is who do we market to? Right now we can draw a concentric circle around Red River and we can go 35 miles in any direction and that's the bulk of our marketing base. And the reason that we're limited to that 35 mile concentric circle is we don't have anywhere to put an overnight guest. The closest hotel is the Hampton Inn in Burkburnett, but we don't own that. So it's difficult for us to use that as a feature to market to people. If we did have a hotel, we're able to go out into a broader market, bring in other guests, which we know, you know, we may not get rich on the hotel, but we can sure make a lot more money on the gaming floor by having an extra market there through the hotel. These also had some financial implications. We saw what happened at the CNC when we saw the market change there. Our net income had dropped 15 percent. Well, let's talk about what's happening to our net gaming revenue and our net income at Red River. Well, I also started this discussion at Red River saying it's the largest provider of cash flow to the nation. That's starting to change a little bit because of the market conditions. At the end of the fiscal year of FY '09, Red River contributed 62 percent. Out of four properties, they contributed 62 percent to the tribal budget. When we looked at the end of the last month, it was 56 percent. Now this is good and this is bad. The good thing is, it's contributing a little less because CNC is making more money. That's the good. The bad is it's contributing a little bit less because it's not making as much money. So we go back and we look and see what net gaming revenue has done. Over the last 12 months, if we look at trends, that net gaming revenue has actually been down 11 out of the 12 months. In fact, if we look at net gaming revenue at the end of May, we were actually 14 percent down from where we were that time last year. Departmental revenue -- and what we count as departmental revenue, at CNC and Red River we have table games. We don't have those at the smaller properties, but we have table games, we have the smoke shops, and we also have food and beverage. Those roll into departmental revenue so that we can account for it differently than the slot revenue. It's actually down 27 percent as well. Bottom line number -- if Lanny was here, he'd say to get to the bottom line. Bottom line number, 17 percent down year over year. So it's time for us to make some changes. Just a real quick snapshot to get an idea of where Red River is today. We can see from a facility perspective it's showing its age. Time for a refresher. But you know what? Not everything is bad. Let's focus on some of the things that we have going for us in that market. There's one thing they can never take away from us, whether it be the Kiowas, whether it be the Apaches, we were the first ones in that market. You can talk to anyone that's in the business industry and they'll say what's the most important thing about being the first to market is its recognition and loyalty. Even though there is a nicer and newer property now, there's still a lot of people that said, you know, I started playing and I learned to play and got interested in casinos by going to Red River. I have some loyalty to that property because it was the first one here. Customer service: We were interested in customer service, and it's something that the board works on and stresses daily to us as management and also the front-line employees. We brought in a group out of Las Vegas that focuses on nothing but customer service and they ranked us against our competitors. Well, we actually had better customer service than what the competitors in that area do. So that's a bonus for us and we can really capitalize on that. If we were to bring in the new property, we would have the ability to bring in new and improved food offerings. We'd be able to entice those people from Wichita Falls and say don't worry about going to Cheddars or going to Logan's, come and have a nice meal at the casino and you can play for a couple of hours. We'll be able to do that with the new property. Game selection: When we spoke a little bit about the Kiowas, I mentioned that they purchased a lot of Class III games. There's different business models that you can look at there and you can weigh the options. We haven't purchased our games and that gives us some flexibility. Our general managers constantly look and see what's popular in the market, whether it be in the southwest Oklahoma area or eastern Oklahoma, or maybe even what's popular in Vegas today. And we have the ability to switch those games continuously. We're not tied down to the games we purchased because we didn't buy them. The competitors did. We're going to use that to our advantage by being able to keep the hottest and freshest and the most income-generating games on the floor. The C Club: Does anyone have a C Club card? There's a few people that have C Club cards. That's great for the players. They get points for their play, but it's even better for us. We capture so much information from that C Club that we can turn around and use for our gaming purposes. When we look to see what our return on investment is through the C Club, it will just blow you away by the number of people. One, we have over 55,000 names in that C Club database now. We're able to track how much they play, we're able to track what games they like, we're able to track where they go on the floor, and we can see the frequency in which they come and try to get them in there more often. That gives us a huge advantage. But with the new property, the Kiowas are not the new, fancy facility. They've actually got to drive by the old Kiowa property to get to the new Red River property. That's also an advantage for us. And with the hotel, which we spoke about earlier, gives us the ability to market to out-of- town guests. We know just the average player is going to lose $35 to $40 every time they come. Typically, if they travelled a couple of hundred miles to get there, they're going to lose a little bit more. A new Red River Casino: We talked about all this in theory. Let's see exactly what a new Red River Casino may actually look like. When we look at a site plan, we've got the first building of Red River here. This is Highway 36. This is the first building of Red River. There's a corridor here that connects the new portion of Red River Casino. We've looked at this any number of ways, and what has made the most sense for us is to actually keep this running and operating throughout an entire construction phase. Because we did this at CNC, it worked well, but we had six months of down time where part of the floor was operating, part of the floor was down. That has an implication on our financials. We want to keep this fully operating during our construction period. Use all of this area to create a really nice and attractive and additional parking spaces. Bring in one casino here with 55,000 square feet of gaming that isn't interrupted by a corridor here. We'll put a breezeway here and 83-room or 85-room hotel tower here to the south of the casino. If you think about that, you've got four stories that are going to be illuminated and shining to the south, so you may drive by the Kiowas casino, but what do you see? You see a four-story illuminated hotel tower at the Comanche property, and from the interstate. So you'll have a sight line from the interstate as well. We have got an additional back-of-the- house to make things more efficient for bringing in shipments of beer and food. We keep all of that off the gaming floor. It makes our property run a lot more efficiently. Here's the existing, here's where the new would be. What does it look like? This is a night rendering. MR. TABBYTITE: This is a really vivid shot, but I don't know if you can see it. MR. ROBBINS: What we're doing here is picture yourself standing on Highway 36 and you're looking towards the west. This is the new parking area that we showed. About 876 parking spaces. You've got an entrance here that goes under kind of a porte cochere, and then another porte cochere here with valet drop off that takes you right into the casino floor. We were approved by the IRS for what they call Tribal Economic Development funds. It's tax-free money. It's still money that you have to borrow, but it's tax-free money, which makes it more attractive for banks to give us lower rates. We can use that for this Red River project. The only requirement they say is please make sure that it's structurally independent of your casino. That's why you see this is actually standing away from the casino with a breezeway connecting. Here's 85 rooms. And if I click back here, you can see when we grow, we've got room for another tower just right here to the west of it. Thank you, Lisa. Oh, one more. I'm sorry. This is just one quick glance of the inside. This is the new center bar area. You can see the slot machines around it, clear sight lines from one end to the other, which all consultants and people in the industry will tell you is important to gamers. It's time for us to do now. The existing Red River Casino, you see all the wires and things that come from the top to make the slot machines work. Here, everything comes from below the ground. You don't see any of the electrical cords. Really a high-end look. MR. BURGESS: Chas, did you say you had some restaurants planned in there? MR. ROBBINS: We do. We've been working with several individuals that work in the industry that know what actually you need to put into a certain market. One market may be really good for high-end seafood buffets. We can probably reasonably say that's not southwest Oklahoma. So what they do is they come in, they do surveys, they talk to our patrons, they talk to people in the area and say, "What do you want to see in a restaurant?" So they're going to take those surveys, come back and help us figure out what the best restaurant is. We've already got the space allotted for that restaurant and maybe a buffet. It may be a three-meal. But we're also going to put in what is called like a grab-and-go concept. Some of those people like to sit down at an actual table and talk with their partner and see how much money they lost. Other people like to go get a sandwich and go back to the machine. So we want to give them the option. We want them to either go sit down and enjoy a nice meal or grab a sandwich and a coffee and get back to that machine. MR. BURGESS: Is the new casino going to have larger floor space than the older casino totals? MR. ROBBINS: When we look at total floor space, the existing Red River Casino has about 57,000 square feet. But the way that that 57,000 square feet is laid out, it's not as effective as what we can do with 55,000 square feet. We can actually add more games with this design with 55,000 than what we can do with the existing. MR. TABBYTITE: Mr. Chairman, this will be one big floor as opposed to two separate floors with the old casino. We had talked about closing that in, that gap between them, but as we got deeper and deeper into cost and renovation -- you'll see in a minute the cost to build new construction was just a couple of million bucks, two-and-a-half million bucks more than the total renovation cost. The floor, because of the way we're going to build it and the layout that will be available, will hold just as many or more machines than the existing, even though it's a couple thousand more square feet at the existing facility. MR. BURGESS: Plus the card room, correct? You'll have a card room? MR. TABBYTITE: Yes, sir. MR. ROBBINS: We do. We'll have a designated poker area and a blackjack pit as well. I think that's my last rendering, Lisa. Thank you. So let's now talk about what the projected implications are financially for this. We've already gone through the GMP process. We've taken these steps as far as we can without getting a commitment from the people. We know that the new casino cost is going to be a GMP right at $28 million. That's not just construction, that's construction, that's the furniture, that's the pictures, that's the soap dispensers in the bathroom, and it's also got in the budget what we call soft costs. There's always costs to getting a new property open. We'll have to bring in some additional staff for the hotel which we don't currently have. So we've got to bring in staff, we have to train them. There's a whole marketing blitz that you do so that everyone can get excited about it before you open it. All those costs are rolled into that budget. Now, we do a separate hotel construction budget. Because of the tribal economic development process I told you about earlier, we're running that as a separate budget item so that we can continue to qualify for those funds as well. The GMP for the hotel is 10.4. Added all together, we're at 38.7. And what do we get for it? We have a brand new casino and hotel. We spoke to it already, about 55,000 square feet. Brand new highway signage, brand new pylon with the nice screen that you see. We're also re-configuring the parking spaces, adding better parking, making it more accessible for people to get in, new entryways from the highway. Anyone that drives that knows, especially on a Saturday night, it's dangerous. So we're giving more options for people. If they need to drive up a couple hundred feet, they can turn in, making it easier to get in and get out. Also adding some RV and semi-truck parking to try to capitalize on being so close to I-44. Relocating some of those out buildings that have just kind of popped up over the years because we needed them. Let's get them away from the sight line of the visitors to maybe where they can see the hotel and casino and put those out buildings in the back. We're also going to renovate the smoke shop so that we make sure it ties into the new look. Now, I told you we've gone through a serious perception of what's the best way to do this. Mr. Tabbytite mentioned that we looked to renovation, doing similar to what we did at CNC. We've looked at this from every angle. When we looked at the renovation cost plus the new cost, we have an extra expense on the renovation. You may think the renovation's always going to be cheaper than building new. But the fact is, if we shut down -- if we had to shut down for six months at CNC, we're looking at a bigger property, so we're going to be shut down for 10 or 11 months at Red River. So you take that lost revenue and you have to add that cost of the project. So renovation of Red River would be about 39.4 million, and a new casino is actually going to be about 38.7. Surprisingly we get a brand new, nicer structure with a longer asset life than what we might have with a renovated property, and it's a little cheaper. Financial projection: What does this all mean? We know that to make money, you've got to invest money. To invest money, you're going to have to borrow money. Are we going to be able to make enough money to make this? I think the bigger question is: Can we afford not to do it? We looked at the revenue numbers at Red River. We've seen that we've lost revenue over the last 11 out of the 12 months. I've done longer trends and then I turned those into forecasts to say, okay, if we do nothing, if we put no investment into this property, what can we reasonably expect from an income perspective? That's this line here, that's the pink line, is us doing nothing. We project out for the next five years, beginning in 2012, and we can be very confident that doing nothing is going to equal less income. So here we're taking net income over time, and over time doing nothing shows where our net income goes. If you want to look at the real numbers, this is the net income projections with no development and doing nothing. In 2012, we can project about 19.7. Let me give you a point of reference. 2009, Red River, about 23 million. So we project that out to 2012, about 19.7. We can make some adjustments, we can draw back a little bit. Well, another 12 percent, another 12 percent until 2016 we're making less than half what we made in 2009. That's going to be some pretty bad adjustments. Now let's do some projections based on the financial model that I have run. It is pretty conservative actually. With the new property, we can reasonably expect net income to go at a gradual increase. It's been really exciting for the nation. When Class III gaming entered the market, we started seeing some huge percentages of growth in our net income. We were seeing 17, 18, 23 percent income increase. Well, the market is starting to mature a little bit, and as any maturing market will do, you can still increase income but it becomes at a slower, more manageable pace. So I think that these are reasonable expectations for income growth. That's this red line. No development, development. Now, we know that net income does not necessarily equal distributions, so let's just look at Red River alone and what it distributes to the tribe. Similar layout. This is no development, this is Red River's distribution to per capita, elder payments, and tribal budget. This is developed. I'll point out one thing here that -- because I know most everyone's question is going to be: If we're borrowing money, what's that going to do to my per cap? What's that going to do to tribal distributions? Because I know the bank is going to get theirs before I get mine. Well, if we look at this and run it through the trend, these distributions with the new property -- this is after we service the debt. This is after we paid the banks, they've got their payment. Now we're distributing the rest of this to the nation. You can see here there is not a year in this five-year projection hat the distributions with the new casino are less than if we did nothing at all. So debt service, yes, but we're still giving more money to the tribe than what we would be giving to the tribe had we not done the development anyway. At this time, I'm going to give the mic back over to Mr. Tabbytite. He'll be making a recommendation. MR. WHITEWOLF: Could you go back? MR. WAUAHDOOAH: I have a question, Chas. Stupid question, but it's got to be raised. Internet gaming, do you guys factor that in? MR. ROBBINS: The Internet gaming is a hot topic in the industry, particularly in the state. National Indian Gaming Association, they threw out a question at their last conference on whether or not that's something that the tribes want the trade association to be researching more to see how it factors into gaming. It passed overwhelmingly. The tribes said, yes, please find out more. The attorneys are constantly looking into it. It is definitely something that we ought to be looking into. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: They're not reflected in there? MR. ROBBINS: With these income projections, I'm basically taking the same profit centers that we have now, putting them in a new property, forecasting what we can do through the marketing initiatives through the Advantage System, and also the additional revenue we can project by having the hotel. Those are the only changes. MR. TABBYTITE: Same thing we consider and talk about the possibility of Texas approving gaming in that state. We know it probably will happen sometime. Internet gaming will probably happen sometime. What we deal with is what is known today and we can forecast, reasonably forecast. We can't include the fact that Texas may okay gambling and they may start out with racinos. Maybe Lone Star, the track down that the Chickasaws just purchased a few months ago, if they roll that out, if it's tribal gaming, there's only one recognized tribe that I'm aware of in Texas, and that's the Kickapoo in Eagle Pass. So it would have to be commercial-type gaming. We may still have an edge in Oklahoma because of our tribal gaming. We know it's coming probably. But we haven't forecasted it yet. We've talked about it a lot, but we haven't forecasted it yet. MR. SUMINSKI: I'm a land owner down there at Red River. And what I want to do is turn Devol into Laughlin. It's going to be multiple hotels. Now, the first thing in hotel and gaming is trust; Number 2, go with somebody that knows what they're doing; 3, has got the financial backing. Now, keys to success: Number 1 is trust. Number 2 is communicate, communicate. If you go with the compact with me and my relatives -- MR. WAUAHDOOAH: Sir, would you identify yourself, please? MR. SUMINSKI: I own that property, that land up here, in trust. Now, the reason I say this, these people have tried to cut my throat. And the reason, there again, why am I for this compact? You win, you draw revenue off that land. The investors win, he draws, and he draws and we draw. Now, he's talking about one casino and I'm talking about multiple casinos. Every time I put a casino on that property, you're going to draw revenue on it. Now, the reason I don't want to go with the local people is because they were cutting our throats for land. Now, that's what I say, trust. Right now I've got people from Las Vegas that's going to be dealing with MGM, Hard Rock Cafe, Paris, they built Laughlin. And we're going to fix those roads, we're going to fix that water, and we're going to have entertainment. And like I say, it all boils down to trust, who you want to do business with. And that's what it all boils down to. And that's what -- why this man is right. The people in the past caused us lawsuits. The reason a lot of people don't want to do business with you is because they brought in the syndicate. You lose the syndicate, you lose your problems. And, there again, it goes to trust. And you really can't blame these people because our former governor was cutting our throats and run it so he could get it. I had to go to the secret service and have him arrested. The FBI is in the pen, too. Like I said, trust. Go with somebody you can trust. I'm a tribal member. You can trust me. And the people I bring in there are going to be legitimate people and you're going to draw revenue off of it. We're going to build houses, apartments. We're talking 160 acres. My ancestors go in with me, build housing, apartments. The only thing I ask for is zero tolerance for drugs, because the governor was running drugs and the bitches so he could get land and casinos, and they were cutting our throats, too. Like I said, there again, the key factor is trust. Go with somebody who knows what they're doing and financial backing. If you go with my compact, I'll guarantee it. There's five FBI people in the joint. You don't think I won't put you in the joint? You try to cut my throat for land, good luck. MR. TABBYTITE: Mr. Suminski, could we finish up our presentation, please? MR. SUMINSKI: Hold on one second. Trust. It's plain and simple. MR. BURGESS: Hang on, Mr. Suminski. Thank you, thank you. MR. TABBYTITE: What we're looking for, of course, is approval. This was the first of a number of meetings that Chairman Burgess and our board decided to set up in order to convey information, because this is going -- because the size of this project is going to have to go out for -- on referendum ballot for approval by the Comanche voters. Of course, because of the amount of money that we're borrowing and the -- and we've got -- we've talked to four banks, we're still talking to them, that each are sizeable banks and each one capable of doing this project of $40 million. They're going to request a limited waiver, which is inherent in any enterprise that comes on. I don't care if we're asking for money from outside sources and they bring the money to us. Because we're a trust and sovereign entity, they're going to ask for a limited waiver of sovereign immunity for that scope of this project, of that 40 million bucks. MR. WHITEWOLF: Where are you going to build this casino? MR. BURGESS: Right next to the old one. MR. TABBYTITE: West and south. MR. WHITEWOLF: Why don't we utilize the Harris property? That's higher profile. MR. BURGESS: I think there's a water issue there. MR. TABBYTITE: When we looked at the previous War Pony site there, getting electricity to it was about 5 million bucks. There were water issues with it. We had planned a hotel/casino and golf course and we never could figure out how to get enough water for all three of those. MR. WHITEWOLF: Why don't we go with a development company? Are you planning on borrowing the money, the tribe borrowing the money themselves? MR. TABBYTITE: That's what we're looking at now. MR. WHITEWOLF: You know our past history with money, it always disappears when it gets into our hands. MR. BURGESS: Well, is that saying you would like for us to -- MR. TOM NARCOMEY: No accountability. MR. BURGESS: Come on, Thomas. Hang on. Come on, guys. If we're going to have an intelligent discussion, let's let one question and then the answer flow, and then go back to the next question. Roderick, I understand you to ask if we were to go with a development company, then are you willing to say that should be a management company, as well? MR. WHITEWOLF: Yes. You know they're to going ask for that. They're going to ask for 25 percent. MR. BURGESS: I believe that's not been brought forward to us, because they understand that we do not want to have a management company. MR. WHITEWOLF: Well, why not? Because we're going to pay interest anyway. MR. BURGESS: Yeah, but we're not going to be paying them and their salaries. Sharrod or Chas, you want to answer that question? MR. TABBYTITE: If we bring in a development company and they bring $40 million and they're not -- they're a, we'll say a machine vendor. They're not only going to want some interest on the money they put up, but they're also going to want control of the floor. They'll bring in machines -- now, who can blame them? That's the surest way to make a lot of money. MR. WHITEWOLF: Yeah, but their time is limited and the amount of money they can take out per year is limited. That's designated a certain percentage every year. And you got what, five-year running the casino? Yeah, that's -- to me, interest would play a big part of it. MR. BURGESS: Okay, we have a question. Later, if you want to respond to Mr. Whitewolf, and then we'll ask Thomas in the back about his question. MR. TOM NARCOMEY: In the past we've had no accounting system and we still don't. We contract our accounting out. I know La Donna Harris' property, we should have looked at a filtering cost for the water, you know. I don't know, Waurika or water district over there. I don't know. It's just an ideal. MR. BURGESS: Thank you, Thomas. Sharrod, did you want to respond to Mr. Whitewolf? MR. TOM NARCOMEY: There's no accountability in the past or the present. MR. BURGESS: But, Thomas, that's the past. We're trying to tell you in the past two years, the IRS has gone in there -- MR. TOM NARCOMEY: Well, we're living with our past accounting system. That's why I was asking. He was our chief financial officer. MR. BURGESS: Mr. Whitewolf, were you just making a statement or asking a question earlier? MR. WHITEWOLF: No, asking a question. MR. BURGESS: You were asking a question? MR. TABBYTITE: If we go with a development company, it's going to be more costly to us. MR. WHITEWOLF: In what way? MR. TABBYTITE: Because of what we're giving up, Roderick. If someone brings -- if we go through VGT -- MR. WHITEWOLF: The contract, you'll have it in the contract what they'll take out and what they'll get, and it's just going to -- MR. BURGESS: What he's saying, I believe, is they're going to give the money up, charge us interest on the money, and then turn around and want to manage the project and take a bigger interest out of the machine profits, and we're going to be giving more over to management company. What, five years? MR. WHITEWOLF: Well, if you let them. MR. BURGESS: We can manage the business ourselves. All we want them to do is loan us the money and pay back the interest on the money, plus principal. MR. WHITEWOLF: If we could manage our business, he wouldn't be asking us. We could have planned for this a long time ago. He's going to ask us are we going to give up our per cap for an 'X' amount of years. MR. BURGESS: He hasn't asked that. I think they ran the numbers showing what our per cap would do if we kept on building and running the casino at the same time. MR. WHITEWOLF: Okay. Go to the next screen. MR. BURGESS: Chas, do you want to go over it with him? MRS. HENDRIX: I have a question. You said there's accountability. How come we never see the gaming budget? MR. BURGESS: You do see the gaming budget. You passed it when you voted. MRS. HENDRIX: Just one line. We don't see anything else. We don't know what's going on. MR. BURGESS: Okay. Then hang on. Let's finish this here. MR. ROBBINS: I'll address Mr. Whitewolf's question on the per capita distributions. What we're able to do is we go to the Revenue Allocation Plan and how it reads for handling debt service should we ever have debt service. And, absolutely, debt service is to come before we run the rest of the proceeds through the Revenue Allocation Plan for the 60/40 split. What we can project reasonably is that even with that debt service -- MR. WHITEWOLF: You're taking that as an expense, then? MR. ROBBINS: Well, similarly. It's called the waterfall feature. It's debt service. You have your expenses, you have net income, you have debt service. So we'll take the debt service out and then we have an amount available to run through the Revenue Allocation Plan, and that's what I run through all of these models. You can see that if we project out with doing nothing and no debt service at all, then this is the amount that we'll be distributing for per cap and tribal distributions. If we do the development, with the increases that we will have in revenue, we'll be able to give more in per capita payment and elders' payments. MR. NELSON: Chas, on debt service itself, have you guys projected the payout times. MR. ROBBINS: We haven't. We're looking at amortization. Most of the financial institutions that we're looking at are looking at seven to 10 years. For those who don't understand, we want to be able to give as much back to distribution as possible. So even though a seven-year time frame shows that we pay less in interest and it will pay off sooner, we don't want to have such a high debt service annually that it decreases distributions. So we're looking at a 10-year amortization, and that's included in these numbers. MR. NELSON: As a follow up to that question: A sovereign immunity -- we passed at the general council floor in 2007, I believe our sovereign immunity on the waiver is $3 million. I know you guys have looked at this, right? MR. ROBBINS: That's where we come for this question here. MR. BURGESS: Chas, a suggestion pertaining to Mr. Whitewolf's question is we need to show the graph how the growth or the loss of revenue towards per cap would be affected, too, because that was one of his questions, thinking that we were going to ask him to give up per cap, and we haven't. MR. WHITEWOLF: To me, that ain't that important, because we're acting like KFWO-TV weather. That's what they're projecting it to be because they don't know. MR. BURGESS: I'm asking him for the rest of the public to understand the loss of per cap and/or the increase in per cap based on those projections. Is that clear? You asked these questions -- MR. WHITEWOLF: He didn't explain it. MR. BURGESS: He did. MR. WHITEWOLF: He said he's going to expense it out. So whatever money we got left, that's going to go to per cap. MR. BURGESS: Yes, but some people don't understand expense it out, so we need for them to explain that on the graph for all the general public. MR. WHITEWOLF: Okay. Go ahead. MR. ROBBINS: Are there additional questions or do you want more clarification? MR. TAHKOPFER: One question. Have you ran a model on how increasing your winning percentages would draw more people if you paid more often? You would draw more customers according to that. Do you have a model for that? MR. ROBBINS: When we look at variables that we have control over, we definitely look at all of those. You're talking about the hold percentage that we have on each game. MR. TAHKOPFER: The winning percentage? MR. ROBBINS: Absolutely. MR. TAHKOPFER: The winning percentage where the hold, the way to get what you want is to get paid bigger, higher percentages of wins. But I know that you don't advertise it, because that would be giving it away to your competition. MR. ROBBINS: We handle that in a couple of different ways. The one point that I showed in our ability to market through gaming selection, where we essentially can affect hold percentages is what we do on gaming selection. We don't have a dial that can go in there and set whether we're going to obtain 8 or 9 percent. What we can do is we look at the theoretical averages on all of those games, and then the gaming commission has the responsibility to make sure that those games actually do perform and operate in a way that we were told they would by the actual industry manufacturers. So that's how we -- MR. TAHKOPFER: Well, I know a lot of people go down there and they say that Comanches aren't not paying. Why go down there? You know, they stay away. MR. ROBBINS: Sure. MR. TAHKOPFER: And I go down there and I spend $100 and nothing. If I win something, maybe 15, 20 bucks. It's not worth it to me. MR. ROBBINS: The gaming industry is all math, it's all statistics. We look at each one of those games and we know statistically over time what we can expect based on the amount of play on there, and that all works into the calculations. MR. TAHKOPFER: I know you can't control those games because it runs by a rapid number generator. MR. TABBYTITE: Since we don't own the games, the vendors set those percentages. We can't go in there and change them. MR. TAHKOPFER: But the tribe can enforce you pay more percentage so that a lot of people will come here. Give them a bigger percentage so you draw more people. MR. BURGESS: Chas, what is the average percentage payout anyway, 87, 93? MR. ROBBINS: Depending on if you're looking at a Class II or Class III game. The Class II games typically have a lower hold percentage for us. It's the Wal-Mart theory. We drive more volume through them, so we still make more money. The Class III games will have a higher hold percentage and we'll make a little more money on every dollar that goes into a Class III game, they just don't get as much volume. So we kind of counteracted on those. The market has changed where a lot of people just enjoy those Class III games more. They may not be statistically making as much money on those Class IIIs as they do the II, but we'll continue to have a mixed floor until the numbers show that it doesn't make sense. Yes, sir? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: There's two areas that you've never even talked about and I've often been concerned about. One is the management. I mean, we do have comparison business here in Fort Sill Apache. And, you know, I'm sorry to say I go to Fort Sill Apaches more than I do Comanches. Why? Because of service. Why? Because when you get there, they welcome you. They open the door and they make you feel, you know, good. So that's one good reason. One thing I want to say is, you know, you put a lot of money in cosmetics, but it doesn't seem like you put a lot of money into your managing, and I think that's where you're running short right now. The other thing is, my concern is tribal employment. I don't see a lot of tribal employees hired at our casinos. It's worse down at Red River. And until you show that, you know, you want Comanches to put their money, you hire Comanches and then I might support you. MRS. HENDRIX: They're working at Fort Sill. MR. TABBYTITE: We try every way that we can to get Comanches hired. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I don't believe that at all. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I don't either. Nobody does. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: You have people at Comanche Nation Casino. I go in there, they don't say hi, how are you, or come back. I had a girl tell me working there that when these people lose a lot of money, they got attitudes with them. They get mad at them and everything. She said, "How do you expect us to be nice to them when they're so mean to us?" I said, "Well, you want their money, you've got to be nice to them no matter what happens. Tell them, 'Come back and see us again.'" Apache Casino has the greatest attitude people I've ever seen in my life. Our casinos, all of them, has so much attitude problems. I got a little girl sneaking me on the side trying to talk to me about the place, because if she talks to me in front of those deals upstairs and somebody sees her, she's going to get fired. You got very, very terrible people that are managing these casinos. And you need to look into these things before you start building this other thing. We could be making a lot of money like Apache. Apache had, for two days, 4th of July, they was giving everybody $25 if you wear a red, white, and a blue shirt. Everybody was running to Wal-Mart trying to buy a t-shirt. That is going to go back into their machines. They're not losing nothing. MR. HENSON: Excuse me, Sis. I want you to know and I want the rest of the public to know, we are doing more business than Apache. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: No, no, no. MR. HENSON: Would you address that right quick? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I've been there too many times. MR. HENSON: It's not what you see out in the front of that, it's not what you see in the public. It may appear that we have lower people going there, but we're making more money. Do you want to address that? MR. TABBYTITE: We are, especially since the renovation, we are -- at the Lawton casino, we've regained a lot of the competitive footing that we had lost. As far as customer service, we had a rating group out of Las Vegas come and do a survey of seven or eight casinos. And the Lawton casino was number two, just behind Fort Sill Apache. The lowest on the list was Kiowa. The other three casinos fit between Lawton casino and Kiowa casino. So according to the rating survey, the best customer service was Fort Sill, the worst was at the Kiowas. But the Lawton facility was number two, just below Fort Sill. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: See, you're wasting a lot of money bringing those Las Vegas people in, because you still got attitudes in that place. Everybody's got attitudes. MR. BURGESS: Before we -- one of the things that Fort Sill Apache does, they spend a lot of money on employees. They pay their employees to be so nice, and that's called the secret shopper program, and that costs them money. They're doing things now that they're trying to bring us all back to them because their competition, us, has become greater. Mr. RedElk has a question. MR. REDELK: Have you looked into what applicable laws is going to be concerned with waivering our sovereignty rights? MR. BURGESS: That's a question over here for our attorneys. MR. NORMAN: I think you've got a slide up here that is your recommendation. Ultimately for the Comanche Nation, the tribal members limited the authority of the business committee to waive immunity above $3 million. This is a near $40 million project, so the membership would have to vote to authorize the waiver of immunity up to that level for the financing documents to be entered into for this transaction to occur. If that vote is not successful, this transaction will not occur, there will not be a new facility. MR. REDELK: There's also another entity that's involved that even if the people pass it, it has to go before the Bureau of Indian Affairs and they have to okay it. If it's not the Bureau of Indian Affairs then it's Congress. There's a law governing trust properties and nations that have trust property. MR. NORMAN: The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which authorizes your existing Red River facility to be there, would authorize this transaction. All that has to take place is your gaming commission, once the facility is built, would have to license that facility based upon standards that it is safe for the public to operate. There's no separate Congressional or BIA authorization that would occur. MR. WHITEWOLF: So you're talking about waiving the sovereign immunity? MR. BURGESS: That's up to the people. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: It's a limited waiver. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: Define limited waiver, please. MR. BURGESS: Up to that amount that's borrowed. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: It's just a dollar amount? No specific gaming area, no specific -- it's just a dollar amount? MR. BURGESS: It would be to that amount based on just the dollar revenue earned by the casinos, correct? MR. WAUAHDOOAH: Limited. MR. BURGESS: Limited waiver of sovereignty. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: What defines it legally, in laymen's terms? MR. NORMAN: It would be the tribe waiving its sovereign immunity for the limited purpose of authorizing whoever you transact business with to -- if there's a dispute, to obtain recourse from you in -- we're either going to be in arbitration or we're going to be in some court of law, but we agree that we will go and fight if there's some sort of fight. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: In other words, for a dollar amount and for a term period of time, right? MR. NORMAN: As long as there is debt out there. What we could seek to do and propose to do in negotiating the documents is say you're limited to the amount that's outstanding on the debt. So if the beginning of the debt is 40 million, your waiver is that amount. A few years later when your debt is something less than that, your waiver would be limited to what's outstanding. And it would only be limited to the revenues of the facility. It's not -- they can't come and take the building, they can't come and take the revenues from the tribe, they can't cut off the services to the tribe. But it would be limited to the revenues that that facility earns and perhaps may be one or two of the others. It's not clear at this point through the negotiation and the financing. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: For up to a period of 17 years, the balance of that debt? MR. NORMAN: No, it would be seven to 10 years, the balance of the debt, depending upon the amortization schedule that ultimately is agreed to. MR. REDELK: So the mortgage is not on the property, it's on the -- MR. NORMAN: It's on the revenue. MR. BURGESS: Hang on. We've got a question in front here. MR. SAUPITTY: Going back to Red River Casino, is anything ever going to be done to that highway? To me, something's not going to be done about it until they have a bad accident out there. MR. BURGESS: The state has that under their jurisdiction and they're planning to, I believe, make it a three-lane highway. If not, it will have left and right turn lanes from the bridge all the way up to the corner in front of our casino. And they're going to put in and improve the irrigation there. So they'll widen that road, making it safer for traffic. So there is a plan, it's by the state. MR. TABBYTITE: Since 2004, we've been talking about that road. Will Owen, the last time I talked to him, appears to be making some progress bringing in the state, the BIA, and I'm not sure who else. MR. BURGESS: The state's under engineering studies now. They're going through their traffic study to have that done. They have to get it in their budget scenario. So we're looking at, if it's not 2011, it will be 2012 that they'll start construction on that new road. MR. SAUPITTY: Technicians, sometimes you have to wait 20, 30 minutes for a technician if you got a problem with a machine. That can be irritating, especially if you're in there for a limited amount of time. Can that be resolved or get more technicians in there? MR. TABBYTITE: We're looking at reporting quicker because of the new system that we have. Hopefully we can respond quicker. That's the goal. MRS. HENDRIX: It takes them that long when it's not even busy. I've been in one time in the past three years and we've had to wait 30 minutes. And there wasn't anybody in there. There never is. MR. BURGESS: I've been in there three times the last 90 days, and I couldn't find a machine I liked. And then I did get a sandwich and a burger, found a machine that I didn't win on, and told me to come back in the last 90 days. So I've been there. It's active Wednesday through Saturday nights. MRS. HENDRIX: The Fort Sill Apaches, you can't find a seat. MR. BURGESS: Personally, I worry about my per cap, so I go gamble at our facilities and nothing else. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Was everybody's attitude good? MR. BURGESS: I'm there to gamble. I ain't worried about their attitudes. MRS. HENDRIX: Fort Sill Apaches, they're treated right, they make money. The Comanches are working over there, the Comanches are gambling over there. We're losing our own people's money because they won't go to ours. And even if you build it like the Taj-Mahal, you've got poor management, you ain't getting anybody in there. The Fort Sill Apaches put an escalator in a tent and had more people in there than we have in all four of ours. MR. TABBYTITE: That's not true. And if you've got some numbers, verifiable numbers, I'd be happy to take a look at them. MRS. HENDRIX: 4th of July, a friend -- I went to Fort Sill Apache, they went over to Comanche. They said there was nobody at Comanche and they couldn't win, so they came back over to Fort Sill Apaches. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: Gentlemen, I think you have a question way up here. DR. YEAGLEY: I have a question and I'd like to make a suggestion. Several years ago we had four construction companies bid on improving Red River. I remember that. It was very dramatic, it was very exciting. It was spectacular. And the people voted it down. Now, my simple question to you is: As an operator, what is your impression of why? What did you walk away with thinking why did they vote this down if this was such a fabulous proposal? In your mind, why would the people vote it down? I'm unclear on this myself and I want your point of view. Secondly, I don't think we're going to resolve this and we probably ought to table it like we tabled some other issues. MR. TABBYTITE: This was purely for information. We know it's going to have to go on a referendum ballot to the voting public at the Comanche Nation. We know that. This is just simply a presentation to show you what we're going to be presenting to them. It won't be in exactly the same form, but we're looking at mailing out hard copies, we're looking at DVDs, we're looking at setting up a special site within the Red River site so the people with a code or a coupon number can get in there to look at more information. This is the first of what's planned to be a series of meetings. MR. NELSON: I hope you guys put it on the Web site so our absentees can see. MR. BURGESS: Ladies and gentlemen -- thank you, Sharrod -- we're talking July 31st for a call of the first presentation to the general public. We'd start that at 10:00 a.m. It's just a general meeting again. One of our meetings, establish this to present this to everybody locally. And then we plan a meeting in Oklahoma City, Dallas, Fort Worth, and Albuquerque, and perhaps California. Thank you, gentlemen. Board, appreciate it. Yes, Mr. Suminski? MR. SUMINSKI: One last thing to say. You can trust me. If all four of these people, they can testify before a grand jury, they say okay, I'll go for it. But, see, the only thing is trust. Everybody's trying to get land and they did me like that. And like I said, it's trust. We're talking with -- if you go with me, we're talking about $5 billion. MR. BURGESS: Excuse me, Mr. Suminski. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, I want to say thank you to Ms. Iola Hayden here, chairperson of the board, directors for gaming, and then Mr. Jim Patterson. Thank you for coming today. Another member of the board, is Daphne here? Is Ms. Daphne Ticeahkie here? Another board member, and your staff. We appreciate Chas for coming. Thank you very much. July 31st, 10:00 a.m. will be our meeting at Woogie Hall down here for the general public, our members. Next on the agenda, Mr. Narcomey, Thomas. You wanted to make a presentation about a forensic audit? MR. TOM NARCOMEY: This was on the agenda at the last annual meeting and we ran out of time. This was a handout for all the tribal members at the annual meeting on this resolution. There were some changes -- I mean additions to it. My name is Tom Narcomey. Mr. Wauahdooah wanted me to read this. It was out of Proverbs 28 -- Chapter 28, Verse 2. "When there is an immoral rot within a nation, its government topples easily. But with honest, sensible leaders, there is stability." And then Proverbs Chapter 28, Verse 5, "Evil men don't understand the importance of justice, but those who follow the Lord are much concerned about it." MR. WAUAHDOOAH: Amen. MR. BURGESS: And I'd like to refer to Proverbs 30, Number 29, Number 2: "With good men in authority, the people rejoice; but with the wicked in power, they groan." There are few that are groaning now. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: Amen. MR. TOM NARCOMEY: Well, anyway, I'd like to read a resolution here. It's to authorize a forensic audit. The first blurb: "The tradition of sovereignty of the Comanche Nation since time in memorial, which long pre-dates the existence of the United States, establishes the tribal government. "Whereas, the CBC is the elected official body designated to conduct business on behalf of the tribe, and "Whereas, the Comanche Nation did not do timely audits and federal reports in the year 2000 or before, and is designated a high-risk status with 93-638 since the year 2004 or before." We've been blacklisted. Think we still are blacklisted. Okay. Did not comply with the federal and tribal laws because of numerous violations of its operations. Housing improvement, HIP, some of the programs we have trouble with, 638 programs, some of them, and gaming funded -- let's see, transportation, workforce, Comanche Nation College. You know, they've got their own checking account for years. And the housing authority, economic development. They've had their own checking account for 5 million. It's like a slush fund. There's gaming and enrollment -- well, enrollment fraud. I guess we had a person in there that wasn't no Indian blood and she was on the roll, Comanche roll. Well, according to Donna Wahnee -- and I don't know how many we got put on the roll, 78 or 71, big numbers. MRS. HENDRIX: 200. MR. TOM NARCOMEY: A lot of people were on there because of fraud. And we don't know if they got per caps or what. If there's anything there, well, we can get it back. See Donna about all the information. Use of gaming monies to fund 638 programs for years for millions of dollars. I don't know how many years we funded this federal grant. Somebody said it was 17 million. I don't know how many years. But I think that refers to the black hole. Everything -- they say where's our 3 billion, the rainy day funds. It's in the black hole. We lost our nursing home money. It fell in the black hole. Well, anyway, that's what -- I don't know who said that first. Anyway, we have -- Comanche Nation has a council-approved $3 million rainy day fund with a 0 balance. Missing funds for a retirement center, burial budget, revolving loan fund and other programs. Thirty percent cut of all programs plus cuts last year, travel cuts. So it was more than 30 percent, more like 50 percent of all the programs. But it has nothing to do with this, our administration. Now, it was in the past that we had no accountability. We had a chief financial officer. Okay. Was fined over $1 1/2 million by the IRS because the complex and gaming operations did not issue W-2G, W-2 forms and 1099s for the years 2002 to 2007, which are simple and easy forms to fill out. So it sounds like our gaming people needed some training on how to fill out a W-2G form. Maybe the board members, too, if they still don't know how to do it, or get somebody in there and contract it out to have somebody to do it. I think we got that settled. We could have done that in the past. That's a lot of money, 1.5 million. I think the IRS settles for a tenth of it. I think it was like 10 million. No matter who represents us, CPA firm or whoever, they'll still settle. We made unauthorized severance pay bonuses in the amount of $255,000 to three casino managers who resigned. When you resign, you don't receive a severance pay bonus, but these three casino managers did. One got 100,000, 100,000 and 55,000. A federal law enforcement officer, a federal law investigative officer told me to leave that in the forensic audit. He wanted to look at that. I've been meeting with him and updating him and working with him on this. Also with our attorneys. And did not conduct a bidding process and did not do contracts for unauthorized payments for modifications for construction projects, which are not warranted. That's on Watchetaker building. There's no bidding process. Whoever built it, if they needed more money, they gave them more money. No contract. When it started leaking, no contract, nothing. Just give them money. Well, anyway, all the construction projects were all pretty much sole source. Maybe the college roof, I don't know. We got to look into all that. Anyway, I want to leave it up to the law enforcement, let them look -- research this and look at our audits and do a criminal investigation of this and see if there's anything there. There may be, there may not be, but at least look at it. I don't know how many millions of dollars this construction project -- and I don't know the statute of limitations, but it's their job. They can do all that. Number 8's an important one. Made unauthorized payments in the years 2003 and 2004 to Texas Oklahoma Promotions, TOPS, based on an unenforceable document which is null and void under federal law and not approved by the National Indian Gaming Commission. Well, our two contracts, gaming contracts that we settled for 5 million and 7.8 million, they weren't approved by the gaming commission. They were null and void, but yet we gave away 12.8 million. It's not the attorneys' fault, it's the CBC at that time that wanted to do that, so -- they're hired guns, they were doing their job. You do this and you do that. And they also represent our CBC not individual tribal members, because the CBC are elected officials and act on behalf of the tribe. Where the CBC does not have the constitutional authority to waive sovereign immunity. They still don't. They got to go to the council. Any contract, any amount, in any court and to contract with another law firm because of conflicts of interest to recover damages for a non-existent contract. It was a letter of intent that we paid a former chairman a million bucks for. I don't know how much money, but let them look at the cancelled checks and see who they're made out to. But our attorneys, they have a conflict because they represent our former CBC. So we need another attorney to avoid that conflict. I gave them the audit findings that said there was a letter of intent, there was no contract. Yes, there was. Yeah, a former chairman made a contract to himself that he would pay himself a million bucks. We're trying to recover the money. We should have done this back in 2004 or '03. We should have done this. So for that many years, we haven't had anybody seeking justice for a long time. We contract with a CPA firm since 2007. I don't know the exact month. Because of the growth of its operations and no accountability, misspent, misappropriated, overspent budget, funds spent without approved budgets and audit findings. We did have a chief financial officer and there was no accountability. Gene Pekah is the one who done all the work. He done the work of chief financial officer. It wasn't his job. And the secretary/treasurer at that time. And he got this contract and had them sign. All they had to do was sign. But he done all the work. That's the reason we're -- Finley & Cook is doing our accounting. So I think Gene Pekah needs a plaque for getting our -- for doing that. But we still don't have our accounting, own accounting. So whereas the need to correct this unaccountability and to prevent further violations. I mean, people would say it's in the past, it's gone, but we need to prevent further violations. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I have a question. Why are you bringing this up now? That's water under the bridge to me. MR. TOM NARCOMEY: There's still a statutory of limitations. We can still correct these things. There was enrollment fraud. There was people getting per cap. I mean, all this stuff. If we're interested in justice, well, we'll look at this. Okay. We need to correct this unaccountability. Well, we are doing steps -- in the past, unaccountability and to prevent further violations demands a thorough, federal criminal investigation to obtain forensic -- prosecution evidence, documents, cancelled checks, and notarized affidavits. Therefore, be it resolved that the CBC authorizes a forensic audit of federal tribal government, gaming, and enterprise funds. We're going into all the areas, like HIP. I talked with people in HIP and they said there were a lot of people that didn't qualify that were given services. So they can pay that money back if they were overqualified. Then workforce, there's some discrepancies there. Transportation: Hop & Sack, we had an account there. That's 638 money. That's federal money. Gaming -- Anyway, the last CBC meeting, our attorneys explained a criminal audit and a forensic audit or criminal forensic doesn't cost anything. They come in and check our books. So this is to pinpoint and say, hey, look at this, and they go right into it. But then we list $400,000, I think, on the gaming audit, but they stopped the audit. I think they should have kept on going, myself. MR. BURGESS: Thomas, may I ask you to conclude here so we can continue? MR. NARCOMEY: I've got a question for the lawyers. On this -- on the severance payouts to the general managers in January of '07, $100,000, Red River general manager; $100,000 to the Lawton casino general manager; and the one down here at Spur I think was 75,000. The chairman authorized that with one of the CBC members to sign with it. Is that -- was that legal? MR. NORMAN: We were not asked to opine or give any input at the time on that. We were not aware of it. We found out about it after the fact, as you did. There were a number of discussions with CBC members in executive session following that whether or not to take any action to look into it further, and the determination was made to leave it alone. So we did not actively look at that. MR. NARCOMEY: I was on board then. I don't remember anything. MR. NORMAN: We had a number of conversations, because obviously it was a very hot topic. MR. NARCOMEY: So there's nothing we can do about it? MR. NORMAN: I wouldn't say there's nothing you can do about it. There's nothing you or anyone -- MR. NARCOMEY: So if we has pass a resolution just on this one item that I'm talking about for the tribal police to look into it, would it be legal then? In other words, I'm sure we can't get our money back, but can we reprimand the people that did it? MR. NORMAN: As an individual, you can give it to the gaming commission, you could turn it into law enforcement. And each of them, as investigatory bodies, could look into it and make a determination about whether anything proper or improper took place. MR. BURGESS: Would that be a proper legal step first, to specify one of those two entities with you that the board would recommend? MR. NORMAN: That's what I'm recommending. MR. BURGESS: And then come back, if that's our desire, for the CBC to move forward with anything? I'm concurring with Clyde. I think they're not empowered to make that legal step, right? They would want to come us and say this is what we found? MR. NORMAN: Well, if the gaming commission, for instance, discovered that there was something that happened that was inappropriate and they involved somebody that they had licensed or regulatory authority over now, they can take some regulatory steps at that time. MR. BURGESS: Okay. There were several things you brought up, Thomas. One of those is some of the W-2 or W-9 filings. I believe the attorneys have negotiated a whole lot with IRS and I think those findings have been, I'm going to say, settled. MR. NORMAN: Yes, the IRS examined the nation and the nation's gaming facilities for 2004, 2005, and 2006. So there's been a -- already been a federal audit by the IRS of the nation and the gaming facilities. And what they originally started with a very expansive look to determine whether there was any of -- anything unlawful done in addition to tax problems. What they ultimately concluded was there was some papers that had not been filed in a timely way. And so the tribe was assessed fees for not timely filing of papers. Appropriate taxes had been paid, but the records that go with those taxes had not been filed in a timely way. So what began as a multi- million dollar assessment by the IRS for these various entities ended up being about a $2 1/2 million assessment. The original amount was like 12 million, so it was reduced by $10 million. That issue is now resolved. In addition to that, along these lines, the CBC authorized a few years ago a forensic audit to be done of the gaming facilities. I believe they spent about $400,000 and a couple of years. And what the -- what was determined from that audit was there were some processes and systems that needed to be improved upon. The only criminal matter that they identified was one which had already been identified and uncovered by the gaming and then turned over to law enforcement and was prosecuted. So there's been a significant amount of auditing, forensic and otherwise, of these time frames that you're concerned about. MR. NARCOMEY: When they gave away that money, did they -- did they go by our RAP? In other words, did they give away these people's money to them three general managers legally? MR. NORMAN: I can't tell you the details of that transaction, because -- MR. TOM NARCOMEY: It's the gaming commission's job to look out for stuff like that, isn't it? MR. BURGESS: Thomas, I believe the gaming commission was not the gaming commission then that it is now. MR. TOM NARCOMEY: Well, that's a severance pay deal. MR. BURGESS: That was a payroll-type thing, yes. MRS. HENDRIX: My understanding is we just gave the Spur manager a severance, too, when she left, so that needs to be investigated. MR. BURGESS: That's brought out. Oscar, were you going to make a statement? MR. TOM NARCOMEY: Isn't it the gaming commission's job to look into TOPS? It's gaming money. Aren't they supposed to protect our money? MR. BURGESS: Let him respond. MR. CODOPONY: The gaming commission was organized by ordinance in 2005. Our staff at the time when all this occurred, we were struggling to separate ourselves from the CBC, which was the gaming commission prior to that. We had limited amount of staff. When all this happened, it was kind of like what -- the issue raised by Mr. Norman, that it was after the fact that we found about it. In the meantime, since that time, there have been severance packages to other employees that have been offered, and those are management issues that do -- that deal with salary. Those are out of the purview, so to speak, because you're talking about somebody's salary and the ability to give somebody -- I'm going to give you 'X' amount of dollars if you leave early, retire, whatever. We don't oversee salaries. That's not our function. Our function is the operation of the games, the integrity of the machines, as was spoken before in the presentation, the following of the MICS. Management deals with the salaries. That's within their purview. MR. TOM NARCOMEY: If they can't do their job -- MR. BURGESS: No, it's not that, Thomas. What he's saying to us is management made that decision. At that time, it was a chairman and another person who signed off over management to award that income. So I think Brother Clyde's question here is do we, the CBC, want to make a resolution/motion for an investigation to go forward and then come back with a report and a recommendation. Is that what you're asking about, in a nutshell? MR. NARCOMEY: I mean, people are worried about all that money going out. I am. It may have been these people's money, their grandkids' money going out. MR. TOM NARCOMEY: That should have been in the tribal budget, 275,000. That's a large amount. MR. NELSON: Mr. Narcomey, do you know the statute of limitations? MR. TOM NARCOMEY: I'm not sure. We'll have to leave that up to the law enforcement. Seven years? MR. NELSON: Federal forensic audit was done by the state. A federal forensic audit was done at the Cheyenne Arapaho. Twelve people went to the federal pen. A federal forensic audit was done and four people went to the federal pen. Now we have all these entities, we have the college, we even have housing, we have enterprises. Are you wanting forensic audits for each entity?. MR. BURGESS: So are you going to authorize that we spend a lot of money for each one? MR. TOM NARCOMEY: It don't cost money to do a forensic audit. You just pinpoint it and say, hey, go over and look and see if there's something there. MR. NELSON: The last one, again, as we heard, was $400,000. MR. TOM NARCOMEY: How much did it cost us to do the forensic audit on the police department? It didn't cost us nothing. MRS. HENDRIX: And I do have paperwork that shows the last chairman stated that there was wrong doing. He put out a resolution that no wrong doing was found, but I do have paperwork that shows there was crimes and there was wrong doing. But he canceled the forensic audit before it was done because it was going that way for criminal. MR. TOM NARCOMEY: As long as it don't hurt, it helps, I say go ahead and do it. MR. BURGESS: Thomas, some of this has been responded to and answered. Yes, we've paid some fines and assessment fees. MR. TOM NARCOMEY: I want good information. MRS. HENDRIX: Pass the resolution. MR. BURGESS: Well, there's several things in here that are under the water, have been clarified, been cleared up by the audits for the last three years, so some of this is unnecessary and too repetitive. Clyde, I think that you had a point on the severance pay. MR. NARCOMEY: That's why I'm bringing up one item on this here. MRS. HENDRIX: And enrollment. MR. BURGESS: Those are the only things I can see at this point that they were contractual in nature or non-legal contracts and agreements not according to the constitution. So those things were signed off. Those might be the most logical. And just to let y'all know about the HIP program, Mr. Nelson over here mentioned housing. Housing has responded to seven years of open annual performance reviews. They've just enclosed. HUD has accepted all of those from 2000 to 2007. And now they're responding to some of the auditor questions that were lying dormant prior to this current administration at housing. So we're doing a lot of good stuff already. I think this resolution needs working, Thomas and Clyde. If y'all want to look at something specific, the two or three things that might be of outstanding nature is my recommendation if you're going to process any further. MRS. HENDRIX: You can still look at all these things. It wouldn't hurt you. MR. BURGESS: What I'm saying is some of these things have been responded to. The audits, and the IRS, and the findings, we've concluded that. MRS. HENDRIX: Enrollment had an audit by the Bureau, and Terry Brewer himself told me that there was applications that Donna would not show him, especially on me and my kids. She would not show it to him. And so they couldn't do the audit on us because she would not provide it to him. Now, that shouldn't be. So there needs to be an audit done there. Because, you know, she had to have something to go by, but yet she didn't provide it to BIA, and they're where we get our money from enrollment. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: How about the college? MRS. HENDRIX: So that needs to be at the top of your list. MR. BURGESS: Thomas, you're proposing -- I don't have -- you didn't give me a resolution. MR. TOM NARCOMEY: We tried to present it at the annual meeting, but we run out of time. MRS. HENDRIX: There's some criminal charges that need to be filed. MR. BURGESS: Gentlemen, what is the feel of the board here, the body? MR. KOSECHEQUETAH: I think they need to separate it out and vote on it independently instead of lumping it together. Like you said, some of them, we've already looked into them and they've already been addressed. MR. NARCOMEY: There's two of them here that hasn't been looked into. If we go into executive session, I'll make a motion to. MR. BURGESS: Coming out, you want to discuss it in executive session and come out and make a motion then? MR. NARCOMEY: Okay. MR. BURGESS: Okay, that's what we'll do. Thomas, we're going to take this under advisement. There are two issues Clyde will bring forward to us on your resolution here. And when we come out of executive session, we'll bring that to the public. MR. TOM NARCOMEY: There's no CBC resolution on there, the severance people. MR. BURGESS: Or on the TOPS, right? You mentioned TOPS. MR. TOM NARCOMEY: Yeah, the TOPS. That's an important one. That involves over a million, I believe. The gaming board picked up on it. They should be doing this, not me. MR. BURGESS: Clyde, when we come out of executive session, you'll have that ready? New motion from Clyde? Thank you, Thomas. MR. TOM NARCOMEY: Thank you. MR. BURGESS: Now we're going to move onto Item 3, which is gaming -- (Break held.) MR. BURGESS: We're going to resume our meeting. We're going to open the microphone up to Mr. Karl Tahkopfer. It did say Indian cemetery project. MR. TIPPECONNIE: But he's changed it. He's doing something in lieu of that. MR. BURGESS: Okay, Karl. Your topic, please? MR. NARCOMEY: Water codes. MR. BURGESS: Topic is going to be water codes here, which were in discussion in a prior meeting. MR. TAHKOPFER: First of all, I'm going to start by asking how many allottees here have allotted property? How many allottees do we have here? Okay. This is all about protecting our ground water resources right now. Right now, we are under intense scrutiny, should I say, or attack by the State of Oklahoma as well as Tarrant County, Texas for rights to lease our ground water rights to be acquired by the State of Oklahoma, leased to Tarrant County, Texas for a period of 99 years. Now, that includes some tribal water, but it includes a lot of allotted water, allotted lands. We're standing here right now kind of behind times. Because I brought this issue up to the previous administration in 2003, but it was deemed it was not important. Now it's at a critical stage. If we don't act to protect the resources, our ground water resources is what we have. We have a little surface water, but it's our ground water. And I'll use some examples. Mr. Kopatchako (phonetic) out of Cache, he is sitting on a tremendous amount of water. He's along West Cache Creek. If I was to use Mr. Jerry Tahsequah, the same way. Much, much water, ground water. Mr. Harlan Roach, who is already being pestered by the State of Oklahoma about letting a well be drilled 30 feet from his property line. You have Mr. Wauahdooah here along Cache Creek out here who is sitting on a tremendous amount of water. One of the best of all is Mr. RedElk. The water's already flowing out of his property on a well that was dug years ago, and it's flowing into the creek. MR. REDELK: Tastes good, too. MR. TAHKOPFER: Wasted. That's what I'm saying. We're sitting out here without adequate protection for our tribe as well as our allottees who make up the tribe. As long as we sit out here unprotected with no type of water codes, violations, encroachments. The State of Oklahoma, as long as we say nothing -- in a court of law, if you don't say anything, hey, it's all right, it's okay. You haven't said anything. And we haven't said anything for years. We have aboriginal rights to this water through treaties signed in 1865 and 1867. That's our -- we are a true sovereign nation. We're not under the state laws of Oklahoma or federal law. We have true sovereignty according to these treaties. We can even go back to 1865, the Fort Gibson Treaty. Our boundaries are described as the 98th Meridian. All lands west of that, Indian lands. We were the ones that was set in 1865 and 1867. Those are our lands. We have the right to make our own laws without anybody interpreting these laws for us. The State of Oklahoma, they said -- Oklahoma Water Resources Board, they say we don't deny the fact that you possess the water rights, but the words are it's how we legislate those water rights. They have no rights to legislative. That's only up to our tribal council, our people and our leaders. We're the only ones that can interpret our laws and they are and to stand as they are and not be interpreted by somebody else who has no right to do that. So it's just like we're surrounded by the opposition or enemy, however you want to say it. They're at the gate. We don't have a gate. It's open. The enemy would be at the door, and we don't have a door. We're unprotected. No water codes that can protect us, the tribe, as well as our allottees. We do have a lot of ground water out there, and that is one of our greatest assets that we have. The way to cripple any nation, whether it be national, regional or local, you take away their natural resources. That takes away their political power, any type of power, economical power. We sit here with a dagger at our heart. The people are saying, more or less -- this is just a little corollary -- that is it all right if I stick this dagger in your heart? As long as you don't say anything, I guess it's all right. That's what we're saying here. We're doing nothing. We're not enforcing codes. We talk about them. For the past seven years nothing's been done. We're in a very, very critical time now concerning our water. Primarily our allottees. Because as long as we sit and do nothing, and only talk about it and procrastinate, that dagger gets closer and closer to our heart, and we bleed. That's our water, that's our heritage. Our ancestors settled there along the creek bank because there was water, there was cover, there was food, the fish. They fought hard to give us what we have now today. And now we're about to be stripped of our most natural valuable resource, which is water, and we're doing nothing about it. So it's up to the allottees to say when do we adopt these codes, when do we do something about it. Are we going to sit here forever until we lose our water? It's there now, it's critical. So these things need to be addressed and need to be pushed in a hurry. We don't have any codes right now. Well, I take that back. We have codes, but they have not been adopted yet. So my question is to the allottees. MR. WHITEWOLF: I thought you were going to -- at the last meeting they charged you with -- MR. TAHKOPFER: There is a copy. MR. TIPPECONNIE: I haven't seen it. MR. TAHKOPFER: It's been there since June the 12th. But like we sat at the last, June the 12th, you know, that most of us -- MR. BURGESS: Hang on, Karl. MR. SCHONCHIN: My name is Lynn Schonchin, and I work for the Office of Environmental Programs. To the best of my knowledge, there never have been actual water quality codes. There is some infrastructure to develop all that. I am working with the EPA to develop water quality codes for the nation. Unfortunately, the Comanche Nation -- MR. TAHKOPFER: I already have the codes. I'm a geologist, so I know pretty well, you know, what all this consists of. MR. SCHONCHIN: But the EPA doesn't have any of those codes from the nation. MR. TAHKOPFER: But this concern, the Clean Water Act, we're already under the Clean Water Act. We have been for years. What I'm talking about is ground water. MR. BURGESS: What Mr. Schonchin is talking about, Karl, sometime in -- was it the '80s? That infrastructure was developed and went to EPA, but it was a project written by grant that was to develop the codes and ensure the codes written. And what Mr. Tahkopfer has done -- and he was charged with this about 2005 and '06 by a former CBC at the time to start working on water codes, and then they dropped the ball. So since that time, since our meeting maybe two months ago, that he went ahead and went back and brought all this research together and has written water quality codes, and refers to the legal right for the tribe to enforce these codes, on particularly neighboring properties to trust properties either for the tribe or our membership who have trust land. So you're talking about the same thing but two different paperworks that are going on. MR. TAHKOPFER: The codes have many things that are prohibited that protect our tribal allottees. For example, if you go along where the mental health center is out here on Lee Boulevard, you go south, you see nothing but housing developments on either side of the road. Farmers are selling their properties so that developers can put new homes there. What happens, they're not on a sewer system. What they use are septic tanks, an aerobic system purifying the water to a certain extent and sewage tanks -- I mean, sewage pools. Okay. What happens is that these systems, aerobic does not do a good job of this. It only -- it's always from your houses and everything that comes out of your home, they purify it in this simplified system that will make it clean. What happens is about 3 o'clock in the morning, they'll water your lawn with it, and it stinks to high Heaven. When that runs off, it rolls right into Crater Creek over here at Cache, that new housing development there. Then it goes on south right into our Indian water sheds along West Cache, East Cache. It already has. Plus it goes down to the Deep Red, Beaver Creek. Pretty soon our ground water, shallow ground water will be -- it won't be worth you drilling for your own watering should you decide to settle out there or your grandchildren. We stand unprotected, like I'm saying. These codes will prevent that type of thing from happening. That's what concerns me. Not only our tribe, but the allottees. They're the ones that will suffer and they will suffer greatly. That's the most valuable asset we have now. We lost most of our rights to oil and gas and those type of things. But this is happening right now. You can see it happening. Developments everywhere. Farmers are selling their land because it's not profitable to farm. Take the example of wheat. The world is producing more and more wheat and we're importing more of that wheat is what's driving down the price for our farmers, so they sell the land. And what happens? Development takes place, they encroach on our lands, they violate things. It makes it to where we don't have what we -- is rightfully ours. And that's the problem. And it is critical right now. MR. NELSON: Mr. Tahkopfer, sir, there's a new exploration being done called fragging -- Chesapeake, ONG, CNG. This fragging, once they do it, they're imploding all types of deadly, deadly chemicals into the ground. And it spoils water wells within a 10-mile radius. MR. TAHKOPFER: Yes, I'm familiar with that. MR. NELSON: With this new fragging, and they come, let's say, to Mr. Nauni and say we're going to give you 4,000 an acre if you'll do this, could our codes circumvent that process? MR. TAHKOPFER: Yes, it does. MR. TIPPECONNIE: You stop it. MR. TAHKOPFER: You stop it, yes. It's there. You can only come within a specified distance of any of our property lines. And that business is sufficient to not only prevent that, but it would stop them from even doing that. Even from putting in disposal wells. It stops all that. That protects our ground water. MR. NELSON: They're coming at it this way. MR. TAHKOPFER: I know they are. That's why I'm saying it's critical now. We have to build some type of defense, because right now we have none. We're wide open. MRS. WHITEWOLF: So, Karl, okay, you have the water codes. What -- does the CBC have anything to do? How do we get protected? How does that tie in? MR. TIPPECONNIE: Approving them, first of all, then enforcing them. MR. WHITEWOLF: Why hasn't the CBC adopted them? MR. BURGESS: We didn't have them on the agenda to adopt them, but we're making changes here. And we do have a copy from them that now all the new members need to review and read. MR. TIPPECONNIE: We all haven't seen them. We need to see them. MR. TAHKOPFER: Once you pay for them, for my compensation, you're free to do what you want. MR. BURGESS: That's why Mr. Tahkopfer asked me to hold them tightly and not to share them until the body is willing to review and adopt. MR. TIPPECONNIE: And to pay. MR. TAHKOPFER: You already have them. Once you have something, you know -- MR. BURGESS: They've not been copied or distributed, Karl. I've done what you requested. MR. YACKEYONNY: What about those of us that are on, like -- you know, the 130 people on the alot- -- the original allotment? You can't spit on the land unless everybody agrees on it. How are those people going to -- MR. TAHKOPFER: Share in the water? MR. YACKEYONNY: What action of -- how can they -- what action is needed from them to protect their particular allotment? MR. TAHKOPFER: Well, you need to get together as a group and recognize that that is one of the most important, critical things that you have and agree to protect it. But only the people can adopt the codes. MR. BURGESS: Let me respond to that. Mr. Yackeyonny, our constitution allows us to represent tribal members who don't have the capability or are not able to represent themselves. The example is -- and Mr. Tahkopfer is aware of this -- when the one family came to us because their land is adjacent to where the non-Indian is trying to take water out without -- taking more than they're legally entitled to utilize for personal or farming needs because they were going to make a sale to a municipality, we stepped in as a nation to represent the other three allotments no matter who they were, because that's our responsibility for help, care in here to represent those members who can't represent themselves on such a big issue. So we stepped in to help that family and the other allottees around, that whole area that was going to be affected with this person taking ground water out. MR. YACKEYONNY: That's comforting. Thank you. MR. TAHKOPFER: Let me say one other thing. Right now you have a situation with Mr. Harlan Roach. There's a farmer by the name of Mr. White that wants to drill a well within 30 feet of his property line to be used for domestic water -- industrial and irrigation. They wanted 55 million gallons a year. That's a lot of water. If you have ever had a chance to get out and watch an irrigation well when it's pumping and watering the crop, there is no gauge on there to measure the amount of water that's coming out, so they can take a considerable amount more than what they say. They're not gauged. That's the danger. Plus them being so close to Mr. Roach's property line. They will lower the water table through a process that's known as -- they encroach on that development when you pump a well so hard. And it will eventually, with hard pumping and the drought comes along, it's going to lower the water table. It affects him. These codes will prevent against that. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: Karl, where would you sue or go to court? What court would you use, I guess, that's non-Indian tribe? MR. TAHKOPFER: I would go to Indian court first, CFR court, and then I would take them to federal court. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: This is what these codes apply for? MR. TAHKOPFER: Yes. It will affix penalties to those violators who do those things. Right now it's happening on Mr. Roach's land. They got a system out there. They drilled the first well in 1964. It came in at 340 gallons a minute. That's a lot of water. Now he wants to drill another one for this purpose, but they're still using the other well. If you go out and look, there's a pump house out there. It's connected under ground. We don't know where it goes. Probably to some rural water district, I don't know. There's other violations that are happening now and we're not doing anything about it because we don't have any codes. Eventually, it will get to where they're on all our alloted lands. I'm involved, too. Our family has a lot of water down there close to Mr. Roach. We have a property in Cache. West Cache Creek flows right through us for a half a mile. MR. WHITEWOLF: I urge the CBC to adopt it as soon as possible. MR. TAHKOPFER: That's up to them, not up to me. I'm just saying -- I'm concerned for our tribal members, as well as our government. It needs to be done, we need to be protecting it. As long as we stand out there and do nothing, we're open for anything. MR. BURGESS: Karl, thank you very much. Yes, Thomas? Make it brief. MR. TOM NARCOMEY: Once we adopt it, we can always revise it, any changes. And then we probably need to put some kind of water department in our budget next year. You're talking about infrastructure, well, maybe we -- MR. BURGESS: Well, at the moment, EPA would be serving as our water department, and they will be checking water quality and could help check water flow. And if we're able to find a way to gauge or meter these, what's going on, as Karl is saying, we need to know how much acre feet is going out by a non-Indian versus what they're legally entitled to when, you know, we know they're entitled to so much use when they want to start selling it. Then we also want to tax them and get our piece of the pie back, maybe? MR. SCHONCHIN: One part of that, too, is if we do go ahead and adopt these, we submit them to EPA Region 6. EPA Region 6 will help us in enforcement authority. If we're not able to act on it through our department, we need help, we can call EPA Region 6 and they can help us act as our enforcement. MR. BURGESS: Thank you, Karl. Thank you, Mr. Schonchin. MR. NARCOMEY: Okay. Now, Karl's been working on these water codes for the past six, seven months. I agree we need to pay him, but we need to negotiate, because you guys have seen what he asked. So we need to talk about it in executive session, I guess, to figure out what we're going to pay him. But I think it would be important to go ahead and accept these water codes. Because these water codes, man, it's getting close. We're -- I would assume with both of these water codes, that puts us 40 million in the hole, you know, myself. Because we need water codes. We need them bad. MR. KOSECHEQUETAH: Well, we can't pay for or accept something we haven't seen. MR. BURGESS: Yeah, and I'll have that, like I said. If it's all right with you, I'll make copies and sit down and show all the CBC. I'm following his request not to share them until paid for. MR. TIPPECONNIE: I really feel, you know, if you make a motion, I would suggest something like we have the opportunity to review the codes and then negotiate the price or whatever. MR. NARCOMEY: How do you feel about that, Karl? MR. TAHKOPFER: That gives you the chance to criticize and re-modify and do everything in there, and then possibly deny payment. MR. TIPPECONNIE: But we do need to review it. MR. TAHKOPFER: I understand that. I know that. MR. TIPPECONNIE: That's just good business to review it. MR. TAHKOPFER: And it's good business to pay when you review. MR. NELSON: Mr. Tippeconnie, I would suggest that maybe if Karl can get with the attorneys and work with -- work that out with Karl. At the same time they could look at the ordinances he has and see what would be the best direction that the CBC should go. I know you guys are busy in your schedule. MR. TIPPECONNIE: I would like to review it. I've been spending a lot of time on water, very active for the last year, two years it seems like now, on water. And I've seen a lot of water of codes. And I agree we need water codes. I'm solidly behind that and I want to see them in place, approved, and enforced. Because we can enforce them, and I think we should get on with that fact. But I think it's only good practice to review it, have a chance to look at it. MR. TAHKOPFER: Yes, but how about something along the line of retaining me? Pay me $2000 in good faith and then pay the rest of it when y'all approve it. MR. TIPPECONNIE: I'm okay with motions like that, but I do think we need to review it. MR. TAHKOPFER: Maybe $2000 up front, and upon approval another $2000. I'll review it with you, then we can go through and make your suggestions, what needs to be added or subtracted. We can do that together at your convenience. MR. HENSON: That sounds like a better idea. MRS. GALLEGOS: How much are the water codes going to cost us? MR. BURGESS: We don't know yet. We've got a price and we're negotiating. MRS. GALLEGOS: A ballpark figure. MR. BURGESS: Under $20,000. MR. YACKEYONNY: Are these legal codes or are we just making up codes? Why is there a price on it? MR. BURGESS: This was discussed back in 2005, 2006. MR. YACKEYONNY: I mean, are they legal codes? MR. BURGESS: Yes, they are. Once adopted, they become our legal codes. MR. NARCOMEY: I make a motion to go ahead and give him the retainer. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: Mr. Tahkopfer, I've got a question for you. You know, a laborer is worth his wages. The Bible says a laborer is worth his wages. Would you be amenable to, as Mr. Whitewolf said, some type of -- $2000. MR. TAHKOPFER: Yeah, that would be fine until you review it and make your suggestion to add or detract whatever you -- MR. WAUAHDOOAH: I would encourage the CBC that we go into executive session when we can, and then within two weeks, perhaps give the balance, if that's -- MR. TIPPECONNIE: He can make a motion, MR. NARCOMEY: Mr. Chairman, I make a motion that we give him a $1500 retainer fee and then review the water codes. And then if you want to add anything else to make it right, you can. MR. TIPPECONNIE: Well, then it's incomplete. MR. NARCOMEY: Whatever it takes. You write them out, you know. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: A laborer is worth his wages. MR. HENSON: Let me ask the CBC this: When we decide to get water codes, do we put this thing out on bid or we just told him to do it? MR. NARCOMEY: I would go with him. MR. BURGESS: We sole-sourced with him prior to us. MR. NARCOMEY: He's a Comanche elder that did it. He's the water expert. Why wait? MR. BURGESS: The previous chairman of the CBC requested of him to start doing this, then they dropped the ball after 2006 through '08. MR. TAHKOPFER: I spent considerable time on it. It hasn't been overnight, I guarantee you that. MRS. GALLEGOS: I have a question. EPA said they were in the process of also developing water codes. Is that right, Mr. Schonchin? MR. BURGESS: No, the statement that they developed is a way to develop the water codes based on all these parameters. But they will review and it will go to EPA. Anyway, we're just right in front of that. That responsibility has been done by Karl. The paperwork that they have was passed some years back and accepted as -- when they say infrastructure, it's a design on how to do the water codes. That's what they've done. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: Do we have a motion on the floor? MR. TAHKOPFER: I can tell you right know that most of this water I'm talking about along where the individuals that I mentioned is within 50 feet of the surface. Plenty of water. And it would only cost around $2800 for one well completed with a pump set and with a pipe buried out to a depth of three feet to be ready for use when you need it. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: Do we have a motion on the floor? MR. BURGESS: Yes, there is. The motion is from Mr. Narcomey. Mr. Tippeconnie, will you read that? MR. TIPPECONNIE: To pay a $1500 retainer fee to Mr. Karl Tahkopfer. He will supply the codes for review by the CBC; and thereafter, the CBC will negotiate labor costs with Mr. Tahkopfer. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: I second that motion. MS. MCDANIEL: I have a short, quick statement. I'm a member of the Poafpybitty family. We have a natural spring and there's 600 million gallons coming out annually, 600 million gallons of pure artesian water. And Mr. Tahkopfer has been working with our family for many, many, many years trying to protect what we have. And so these water codes are long overdue, and we have lost, you know, hundreds and thousands of dollars because we don't have these water codes. So Mr. Tahkopfer has been working on these water codes for many, many years and he's tried to introduce them time and time again. So if we adopt these water codes, it's going to save hundreds of thousands, even millions and millions of dollars in damages to our people and their allotments. So whatever you give this man, if it's $1500, if it's $100,000, it's a damn drop in the bucket as to what it could preserve. So these water codes needs to be adopted. They're long overdue. And I would say we need a deadline of next month to get these water codes in place and save our water, and pay Mr. Tahkopfer his due. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: Amen. MR. TIPPECONNIE: I would suggest that the resolution convey that. You know, the $1500 that Mr. Narcomey's proposing is just a retainer fee so we can review the documents. MR. WHITEWOLF: That money is his. MR. TIPPECONNIE: Yes, it does go to him. Then we review it and then we negotiate the completion of that. Then hopefully, if it's very -- acceptable to us, we pass them. Because I think we should adopt them just like you're saying there, Eleanor. I think we need those codes now. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: I second it. MR. WHITEWOLF: You guys remember that we're going to have a fair and it's going to cost us over $100,000 and that's going to be gone. MR. BURGESS: Seconded by Mr. Wauahdooah. Call for the question here. All those in favor of the motion to pay the retainer to Mr. Tahkopfer and negotiate with him on water codes, all those in favor signify by saying "aye." (Aye.) MR. BURGESS: All those opposed, same sign. All those abstain, same sign. The ayes have it. Ladies and gentlemen, we're moving to Item Number 5, as Mr. Wauahdooah requested. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: Is it Number 4? MR. BURGESS: Oh, Mrs. Saupitty, Charlotte Saupitty? She's not here. Item Number 5, Mr. Nelson, you want to approach the table? You said you had a statement to make to the community? MR. NELSON: I guess I'll stand here by this microphone. You've got to break the ice some way. Today I come before this legal quorum of seated business committee members and the Comanche citizens with honesty, humility, and respect -- Whitewolf, Parker, Cables, Saupittys, Yackeschis. On Wednesday, May 26th, 2010 Vice- Chairman Richard Henson, gave me a memo that read, "Because of an ongoing investigation of the incident which occurred yesterday, you are hereby placed on administrative leave with pay starting 12 o'clock p.m., Wednesday, May 26th, until further notice. You are not to conduct any tribal business as tribal administrator or contact any employees regarding this investigation until this investigation is complete. You will be contacted by staff when to return to work." I, William Nelson, who swore before the secretary/treasurer to uphold the code of ethics which states: "I will uphold the Comanche Nation Constitution, all acts passed by the general council, and all other official codes, ordinances, and regulations formally and legally established by the general council." I, William Nelson, have followed this oath with truth and faithfulness. I have. The Comanche Nation Tribal council hired by the tribal administrator/manager has been compromised by a single directive. To date, there has been no legal charge levied against me. To date, there has been no legal, formal complaint levied against me. The Comanche Nation Constitution, which binds all elected officials to follow the intent, value and the exact wording of that constitution. I, William Nelson, beseech the business committee to lift the single directive imposed by Vice-Chairman Richard Henson. Today, we can all attest that the Comanche Nation does not have a legal court system. We do not have a legal court system to determine internal disputes. In the year 2004, the CFR made this documented opinion, which reads: "As such, the tribal court is governed by 25 CFR 11.104, which precludes the court of Indians Offenses from involvement in internal processes." Signed by Judge Lujan. The case was our chairman. In closing, the events that happened on May 25th, 2010, were never intended by myself to be misconstrued as malicious, calculating, or evil as a tribal administrator/manager of the Comanche Nation. All employees, all citizens within the government need to be assured that the day-to-day operations are safe and beyond political strife. Today, today, I apologize to anyone that was offended by the response test of May 25th. I have to remind this legal quorum as the business committee that work needs to be done, and my absence only hinders legal, legal day-to- day operations. May we come to peaceful resolve and not jeopardize the integrity of the Comanche Nation any further. I beseech this legal quorum of the business committee to make a legal motion to reinstate the tribal council legally hired tribal administrator today, July 10th, 2010. May Ta-a'pah bless all of you and may he bless your decision and your actions today. MR. BURGESS: You heard Mr. Nelson quote a court proceeding that happened back in 2000 -- what was the year? MR. NELSON: '04. MR. BURGESS: '04. Mr. William Norman will respond to the conclusion of that lawsuit in the CFR court and the appellate court's decision. MR. NORMAN: I think it was accurately reflected in the comments of Mr. Nelson that the CFR court does not have the authority to address internal tribal disputes of the Comanche Nation with and without express consent of the nation, and that has not been given. So he is correct that there is not a forum there for these types of disputes to be handled. MR. BURGESS: That lawsuit Mr. Nelson is referring to was one I brought forward to protect the constitution and the responsibility of the tribal administrator. In April of 2005 -- well, let me back y'all up. 2004, I'm accused of endangering children, putting them into a home unjustly or whatever. Through the court proceedings, I proved that those were false claims. However, the lawsuit contended that I should not be a TA because I was fired by the business committee. I was fired without due notice, I was fired without being brought before this body at that time. And I told them you can't fire me because, according to process of the constitution, those who hired me should fire me. We went to court, the court put me back into office on a restraining order. In 2005, I was reaffirmed as the TA by a declaration of the body. In 2005, the job description for the tribal administrator, when I was a tribal administrator, was changed, not according to the constitution, but by the CBC. At the same time, two weeks after our tribal council in April of 2005, the appellate court heard the Comanche Nation's appeal. The appellate court of CFR voted 2 to 1 to overturn Judge Lujan's decision. That decision stated that the TA is under the direction and supervision and must follow the stated orders of the CBC as an employee hired by tribal council. So that's how the appellate court got into this, they overturned Judge Lujan's decision. I was left alone by the CBC until the following year, '06. They tried to bring me up, members are gone, tried to write me up as insubordination. However, again I quoted the constitution as Mr. Nelson has done, because they didn't come to you all, the body, to change the constitution to say what the duties of the tribal administrator were. Since that time and before, there's been a lot of rhetoric, talk. But in the meantime, I did not perform or do any of the acts that broke this constitution, policies or procedures of the nation. So I retained my job until 2006. 2006 when I ran for office, I was told by the CBC that I'm an employee, therefore I had to resign. I, too, like Mr. Nelson, said, no, I'm an elected official, I'm not going to resign. When they said they took a vote to terminate me and fire me because I ran for office as chairman, I walked out of there with determination. I didn't fight it, I didn't say anything about it. At that point in time, I was a TA who challenged everything the CBC wanted to do over this constitution, I mean, illegally. It stands that the TA is an employee of the Comanche Nation, though hired by tribal council, responsible to the constitution to uphold all laws, all rules, all regulations, all ethical codes that are enforced by our polices and procedures for every employee. So at that time -- just to explain to you why Mr. Nelson stands before you to quote the lawsuit that I brought forward which was overturned by the appellate court, that lawsuit states the tribal administrator is an employee. That's all I can tell you about the lawsuit. I will quit right there. MRS. HENDRIX: Did the attorneys just state that we don't recognize the court? So why bring up the appellate court and their decision if we don't recognize them? MR. BURGESS: The attorney's were never aware that a recall was taken out on me and it failed. After the lawsuit, first termination, CBC came back, tried to get a recall on me, that failed. End of story. They couldn't get a recall on me, so I stayed until 2006. MRS. HENDRIX: You can't get a recall on a TA because he's elected. MR. BURGESS: You have to follow the process of removal. That's the same with us. MRS. HENDRIX: Doesn't the constitution say that you can only be removed for a misdemeanor or a felony that involves money? Is that what the constitution says? MR. BURGESS: That refers to the CBC. MRS. HENDRIX: Well, he's elected. MR. BURGESS: That refers to the CBC. MRS. HENDRIX: Well, I thought he was an elected official? MR. BURGESS: Tribal administrator position, if y'all recall, many of you spoke up and didn't want it to go on the ballot because of the historical process. MRS. HENDRIX: You're a paid employee? Can we fire you? MR. BURGESS: We tried to establish the fact that you wanted it to be the tribal administrator was an elected official. This body here, the visitors, the CBC said that's illegal, that's wrong. We were trying to clear the air of the TA, elected official or not. MRS. HENDRIX: Your salaried, so what's the difference? MR. BURGESS: By the constitution. MRS. HENDRIX: Right. You're still a salaried employee. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: -- go against what you voted for? MR. BURGESS: I have no response to that question. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I wouldn't either. MR. BURGESS: None of us do unless you want to talk to the two new members. MR. NELSON: I beseech the business committee for -- MR. WAUAHDOOAH: I just need to clarify something here. We are here and now. And what has happened in the past -- this may have been a little gray area, but we are here now. According to constitution's Article 5, Section A, it says to hire -- the general council shall hire an administrator/manager to administrate the tribal government. The administrator/manager shall be under the direction of the business committee. We give them general direction, but we cannot fire this person. And so I want to bring this open. The only person that can fire the TA is the general council, the tribal council, in my opinion. The tribal attorneys may have another opinion, every individual here may have a different opinion. But I don't want to be labeled the CBC fired that guy illegally. I don't want that. I want all the laundry being brought out on him against us. MR. BURGESS: He's on administrative leave. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: I don't know, that process may be a little cloudy, too, how that came about. But I just want to make sure everything is brought out in the open. MR. BURGESS: This process is called following HR policies. MRS. HENDRIX: Whoa, whoa. I don't think we need to go to the attorneys. They're paid by y'all to say what you want them to say. MR. BURGESS: Did tribal council hire him? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: No, he was not. MR. BURGESS: He was not hired by tribal council? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: No. MR. BURGESS: Then all employees follow HR policies, do they not? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Only those under the realm of the tribal administrator. MR. BURGESS: I'll give you an overview of the lawsuit, that's what it stated. Do you have any furthermore statements, Mr. Nelson? MR. NELSON. I beseech the business committee to entertain that motion. MR. BURGESS: We have no motion. MR. NELSON: I beseech that you entertain a motion to reinstate today. MR. HENSON: You've got a comment to make? MS. HALL: I'd like to hear from Clyde, his opinion on this situation. And see what -- MR. BURGESS: Excuse me. You can talk to Clyde privately, but in this body right here, because of the potential law parameters before the rest of these new members here, we're not making a statement. MS. HALL: I see. So not one of you is willing to make a motion to reinstate the TA? Is that what you're saying? MR. WAUAHDOOAH: I will make a motion to reinstate the TA. MR. BURGESS: Mr. Wauahdooah, I'm going to caution you. You haven't heard the full gamut of this investigation. MR. NELSON: No formal charges have been levied against me. This is only an investigation. MR. BURGESS: Again, you haven't heard the full -- MR. REDELK: Well, let's hear it. MR. BURGESS: Not in open session. MRS. HENDRIX: What have you got to hide? MR. BURGESS: I'm not subjecting ourselves to any lawsuit. Mrs. Gallegos, you have a question? MRS. GALLEGOS: When Mr. Wauahdooah decided to amend the agenda and then we were going to listen to Mr. Nelson, so the whole can of worms has been opened. I know he's on administrative leave, but we've heard tidbits here and there. I haven't heard the whole story. Mr. Nelson, why are you on administrative leave? What did you do that was such a nature? MR. NELSON: I had a response test. A mock drill of internal, internal, internal. Internal, internal only. Why the miscommunication got to where it went to, I'll never know. MRS. GALLEGOS: You say internal, describe internal. MR. NELSON: Internal law enforcement, internal wildlife firefighters, and internal medical first responders. MRS. GALLEGOS: And these people were all aware of the mock drill? MR. NELSON: They were told by me, but I guess the communication got lost. Honestly. I didn't wake up that morning and say, "How much malicious activity can I do this morning?" No, I did not. MRS. GALLEGOS: Did every member of your emergency management team know -- MR. NELSON: My intent was nothing. This was a response test. MRS. GALLEGOS: I can tell you, I have a nephew who is doing community service because he unintentionally pulled a fire drill -- pulled a fire alarm. He said, "I didn't mean to do it. I just wanted to see what happened." It was unintentional, but yet he's doing community service. MR. NELSON: Like I said before, we have no legal court system, we have no legal court system. I have not been charged with anything. I haven't even had a formal, legal complaint. The thing is, they say the investigation, what investigation? Investigations have charges. I mean, Sheriff Stradley laughed at me when I said, "Do you investigate a misdemeanor?" He said, "Are you crazy?" MR. WAUAHDOOAH: This is such a gray area. MRS. GALLEGOS: Is the emergency management team that you were meeting with that day, were they aware of this mock drill? MR. NELSON: Yeah, they were all right there. Yes. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: Mr. Willie Nelson, this is such a gray area of the law or policy here. Rather than the CBC handle this, it should be brought out in the open, which is what we're doing right now. And if you're going to be fired, it's going to be the general council. All we can do is just give you a vote of confidence. The majority vote you had at the last tribal council, that will hold. But if there's any question about your character or other things -- I understand from some CBC members that they've got dirt against you. That needs to be brought out. MR. BURGESS: Excuse me, it's not dirt. These are findings of an ongoing investigation. MRS. HENDRIX: Is this investigation over? MR. NELSON: I don't know. MR. BURGESS: No, it's not. It's still ongoing. I understand the Magistrate Ryland Revis, he's a Comanche Nation member, he's got something. He's too busy with the Kiowas, he's too busy with the Apaches. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I have a question. If Willie can stand up here and tell us that there are no formal charges, what are you guys hiding if there's an investigation? MR. BURGESS: We're not hiding anything. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Well, if there's an investigation, how come we don't know about it? MR. BURGESS: Mr. Norman, do you want to respond on the legal challenge? MR. NORMAN: This is a criminal investigation. If the business committee begins to talk about the details of it, they potentially compromise that criminal investigation, which could subject them to their own potential problems. So they need to allow the criminal investigation to take place. If it goes nowhere, then that will be reported out. If it does go somewhere, that will be reported out. They're not in a position to -- they cannot disclose and compromise that investigation until it's completed, and that's being handled by the law enforcement authorities and the prosecutors. MRS. GALLEGOS: So there is a criminal investigation ongoing? MR. NELSON: Can you explain to these people why I cannot retain legal representation because of the charge not filed? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Me? MR. NELSON: Yes, sir. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Well, I don't know that I can. MR. NELSON: Well, sir, a charge -- I would come and get you if I had a charge, correct? So an investigation, I cannot retain legal counsel. MRS. HENDRIX: Because there are no charges? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I thought the United States endorsed the innocence until proven guilty? MR. NELSON: It's in the 6th Amendment. MR. BURGESS: Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Nelson has made his statement. We have on the agenda an update of this situation. MRS. HENDRIX: Mark made a motion. MR. BURGESS: There was no motion made by anybody from the CBC. Who made the motion? You made a motion? MR. WAUAHDOOAH: I'll restate the motion: I make a motion that we reinstate Willie Nelson as Tribal Administrator. MR. BURGESS: Motion's been made. MR. WAUAHDOOAH: Or bring him back to work. He's on paid leave right now. We're paying him $75,000 a year to just sit there and twiddle his thumbs. If he is the general council's elected employee official, then he needs to be on the job. MR. BURGESS: I'll say it again, Mark. I caution you before you really -- MR. WAUAHDOOAH: I do say this: I'll stand with my motion. But I say, Willie, there are some imperfections in all of us, including you. We're going to be addressing those things if you come back. But I don't think this incident was worthy of being laid off or terminated or what. You may need to be rebuked, reprimanded some way, but not this method. MR. KOSECHEQUETAH: Well, Mark, when we talked earlier about adjusting -- you made the suggestion to adjust the agenda and we agreed on that, to hear Willie out and to hear that side of it? MR. WAUAHDOOAH: Yes. MR. KOSECHEQUETAH: And you understand the reason we can't respond is we have not fully been -- the information hasn't been disclosed to us. That's why it's in executive session. We're going to be hearing stuff that we don't know, we haven't heard before. We can't start speaking now or taking action until we hear some of this stuff that hasn't been disclosed to the business committee as a whole. MR. REDELK: Is that going to take place today? MR. BURGESS: Right now. MR. KOSECHEQUETAH: That's my understanding. MR. REDELK: Has the investigation been completed? MR. BURGESS: Not completed, it's ongoing. MR. REDELK: How many days have we been investigating? MR. BURGESS: When we go into executive session, you will hear that. MR. REDELK: Well, how many days? Thirty-seven days. MRS. HENDRIX: Mike, you're the only one that knows this information, because Darrell's saying he doesn't know anything, and these guys seem to know more than you guys over here. So what do you know that these guys over here -- MR. BURGESS: What I do know I will not disclose in public. What I do know will come from the police department today. MR. WHITEWOLF: Who is doing the investigation, Mike? MR. BURGESS: The police department. MR. WHITEWOLF: They can't even find somebody that stole a wagon or a TV. How are they going to do an investigation? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: You couldn't find them either. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: How can one person fire the tribal administrator when it takes a quorum for the CBC to legally act? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: He wasn't fired. MR. KOSECHEQUETAH: Nobody's been fired. MS. MCDANIEL: To act period. It says under the constitution that the CBC will have responsibility over the TA, not just one person. The CBC means all of you, not just one person. MR. BURGESS: Mr. Tippeconnie will have a response to that. MR. TIPPECONNIE: There was a formal meeting of the CBC. And during that time, a motion was stated -- it was made by Mr. Kosechequetah to ratify the actions of the vice-chairman in the absence of the chair to place the tribal administrator on administrative leave, pending an investigation and upon recommendations of law enforcement. MR. KOSECHEQUETAH: With pay. MR. TIPPECONNIE: With pay. MR. WHITEWOLF: Mr. Kosechequetah don't know the constitution, because you can't convene a business committee meeting in one day. MR. TIPPECONNIE: No, this was a continuance. MR. WHITEWOLF: But you always have an ongoing. You know, you have a monthly ongoing meeting. MR. BURGESS: We have a monthly ongoing meeting. It looks like we'll have another one after today. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Was there a quorum present? MR. BURGESS: There was a quorum present, yes. MR. TIPPECONNIE: It was seconded by Mr. Asepermy and the vote, yes. There was a quorum present. MR. BURGESS: The question was asked about was there a legal quorum. There was a legal quorum, the motion was made. The investigation has an update that we're all going to hear today. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I just want to know where it says this can even be done to the tribal administrator to put him on administrative leave. Policies and procedures do not affect him, that affects employees below him. So where in the constitution does it say it can even be done? MR. BURGESS: Because we're his supervisors. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: You direct him. MR. BURGESS: We're his supervisor. We direct him. We're not going to go any further. We're going into executive session right now. Would y'all please clear out? Motion failed due to lack of second. (Executive session commenced at 1:33 p.m.) * * * * * * R E P O R T E R 'S C E R T I F I C A T E STATE OF OKLAHOMA ) ) COUNTY OF OKLAHOMA ) I, Kelly Stoabs, Certified Shorthand Reporter for the State of Oklahoma, certify that the above and foregoing meeting transcribed by me is a true and correct transcript of the meeting; that the meeting was held on July 10, 2010, in the State of Oklahoma; that I am not an attorney for nor a relative of any said parties, or otherwise interested in the event of said action. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set hereunto set my hand and seal of office on this the 26th day of July, 2010. __________________________ Kelly Stoabs Certified Shorthand Reporter for the State of Oklahoma S E C R E T A R Y ' S C E R T I F I C A T E I, Robert Tippeconnie, Secretary- Treasurer of Comanche Nation Business Committee, certify that the above is a true and correct transcript of a meeting of CBC Members held at 10:09 a.m. on July 10, 2010, and that the meeting was duly called and held in all respects in accordance with the charters and bylaws of the Comanche Nation and that a quorum was present. I further certify that the votes and resolutions of the CBC Members of Comanche Nation at the meeting are operative and in full force and effect and have not been annulled or modified by any vote or resolution passed or adopted by the CBC since that meeting. Signed:_________________________ Date:____________ Robert Tippeconnie Secretary-Treasurer 22 1