Melissa and the Mayor

An Unholy Alliance

81. As I stated in the last blog(see point 78), I said I would have more on this meeting. When the cops told me about Melissa Hyatt complaining to the Mayor and Chief, I was totally surprised. I had seen her before, but I never met her and I didn't even know her name. I then asked the cops if they knew that her and her partner(now deceased) were interested in buying the Palace before I was in the picture and they didn't. I think they were surprised. So I guess we surprised each other that day. When I inquired about buying the Palace in 2016, the owner told me he would not sell to them because of her constant harassment of him, his staff and customers regarding the parking lot. He also told me that she had cars towed out or threatened to, on her part of the lot. At that time I really did not pay much attention to that situation. I was more interested in looking at the numbers of the business, and not petty arguments that they were having. I took ownership of the Palace in 2017.

82. Soon after I took over, she resumed her reign of terror with my company. She would come in and berate staff and sometimes customers. She was rude and vile and acted like a bull in a china shop. It was very unprofessional of a fellow business owner, but I chose to ignore it. Every time my staff would tell me about another incident, I told them to let her know that if she had a problem, she could call me and I would be happy to meet with her. I never did hear from her. I don't have a lot of experience with neighbors like her, but I know that you can never please them and the more you pay attention to them, the worse it gets. They just keep finding more things to complain about. One day I was outside in the parking lot and she was there. Just the two of us. Awkward. I said good morning and did not get a response. I really didn't care, but, hey, I gave her an opening and she didn't take it. Another time, I was in the parking lot talking to an employee and this couple pulls in and parks in our lot and go in the back door of her business. My employee asked me if I was going to get their car towed. I said absolutely not. First of all, they might be customers of our place or they probably know somebody who is. Bottom line is two wrongs don't make a right. I have never towed a car from my lot unless it had been there for days(basically abandoned). And despite all of her nonsense, I never once did anything to retaliate. She never called or wrote a letter, absolutely nothing coming from her directly to ownership about her woes. But in the fall of 2021, the complaints from my staff were getting worse and more frequent. At that point after almost 4 years of abuse, I decided to ban her from the premises. The funny thing is, I guess some of my staff were customers of hers and she banned them. I never knew about that until several months later. It's her place and she had every right to do that, but it did sound silly to me.

83. When I got the letter on April 12,2022 from the Mayor(see point 12), I immediately thought that she played a role in this. I told this to my lawyer, to my wife and to a couple of other people. What I didn’t know back then, was how much of a role she played in it. And that is when things took a very strange turn. So, suffice to say, you will be hearing a lot about Melissa and the Mayor in future blogs.