- Neighbors are filing a lawsuit against the City of Bainbridge, Decatur County, Decatur County School District, Decatur County Board of Education, and Decatur County Board of Tax Assessors.
- The legal complaint urges city and county leaders to take action to reverse primate breeding deal.
- Watch the story to hear from a few of the residents that have taken legal action to push against primate deal.
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
A handful of neighbors opposing a monkey facility's claim on Bainbridge are now taking legal action against their own local leaders.
Talking to some of those involved in the lawsuit who tell me the goal is simple.
"Stop the monkey farm completely,” said Bainbridge resident June Faircloth.
That's local business owner June Faircloth. She along with Kristina Martin, Chad Dollar and Lisa Dasilva filed a legal complaint against city and county leaders.
Why?
"We needed to make another movement. There was not enough happening within our city council or our city government period,” said Faircloth.
Neighbors are filing a lawsuit against the city of Bainbridge, Decatur county, Decatur County school district, Decatur county board of education, and Decatur county board of tax assessors..
The city recently released a joint statement applauding county commissioners' action to reverse their past votes to approve tax incentives and the pilot agreement. That statement said in part quote:
"After hearing from you, we realize that the economic benefits of this project are not worth the divisiveness the project has caused within our community."
"There's proper procedure and they failed to follow proper procedure,” according to Kristina Martin, a local Bainbridge resident.
Groups listed in the complaint allegedly violated the open meeting act by voting to approve incentives equaling over $58 mil. and a pilot agreement for Safer Human Medicine without allowing community input.
It's a project I've been telling you about for months now.
"Take ownership of it and say we did this wrong,” said Amy Meyer, the manager of the primate experiment campaign, PETA.
Despite the primate deal NOT being on Tuesday night's city council agenda Meter tells me–
"They need to be hearing us. Because they didn't hear from people before they agreed to this project,” said Meyer.
Residents filing the legal complaint are standing alongside PETA asking the city to follow county officials lead by taking a new vote against the primate project.
The city has already released a joint statement letting neighbors know they've asked Safer Human Medicine to locate elsewhere.
