by Mark Smiley
The lawsuits, both state and federal, filed by M.A.K. Investment Group LLC, owned by Mohammad Ali Kheirkhahi, Mozafar Hemmati, Saeed Kholghy and Nasrin Kholghy, against the City of Glendale concerning the five acres of land the corporation owns on East Virginia Avenue appear to be going so poorly that the Iranian family has decided to resort to other methods to pressure the city to buy the corporation’s land for a price the city believes is clearly excessive or be allowed to build on the land in violation of the Glendale zoning laws and Master Plan.
“They appear to be going down and dirty,” declared former Glendale City Councilman R. Wayne King. “They appear to want to find dirt on anything or anyone to bring pressure on the City Council.”
The agent for digging up possible skeletons is Denver resident Jeanne Price who describes herself as a “freelance columnist.” She makes consistent and massive Public Information Requests to the City of Glendale, notwithstanding the fact that the city has provided to M.A.K.’s attorneys over 100,000 copies of city documents. She appears at virtually every City Council meeting sitting by Mohammad Ali Kheirkhahi, the registered agent for M.A.K. At many meetings she addresses the City Council accusing them and the city of purported misdeeds and wrongful actions she claims she has discovered.
“It’s strange,” stated Glendale businessman Scott Brock who regularly attends Glendale City Council meetings, “you have a Denver resident with zero connection with Glendale who makes outrageous statements at every council meeting with little or no factual basis. But I guess it’s the way the Kholghys do business. They wonder why so many people in Glendale despise them and do not wish to have any connection with them. I hope Mohammad and the rest of them pay Ms. Price a lot of money to make a fool of herself on a monthly basis. It really is an embarrassment to any town to have someone like that around.”
At the City Council meeting on September 15 of this year she declared:
“Having read four or five years of your [Council] minutes that this Council spends more than half of its time in executive session. And that is a unique situation in my experience.”
At the following City Council meeting Mayor Mike Dunafon reported back to the Council that he had no idea where Ms. Price o
btained her information. At the instruction of Mayor Dunafon, the City Clerk tabulated executive session frequency over the last five years. Her report indicated the City Council had not a single “executive session” in 2011, 2012, 2013, or 2014. In 2015 the only “executive sessions” held were those required to be provided legal advice from the City Attorney regarding lawsuits filed by her client M.A.K. which cannot be held publicly in order to preserve attorney client privilege.
“The woman is a disgrace,” stated Glendale resident Melissa Jauregui. “She almost never gets her facts right and her claims are wild and unsubstantiated. If she actually found something that the city did wrong she would have gone to the City Attorney, the County Attorney or the U.S. Attorney or to a court. But she doesn’t. She just tries to make herself as unpleasant a human being as possible at every City Council meeting. That is apparently her purpose as the agent for this group.”
Glendale resident Doug Stiff noted, “She is a technique used by Mohammad Ali Kheirkhahi and the Kholghys. Make life as miserable as possible until people are so worn down that they are given their demands no matter how terrible it would be for the city. This must have worked for these people before, but they certainly know how to get a whole city to dislike them. They brought in the racist paramilitary group the Oath Keepers who intimidated minorities and others at a City Council meeting. When that didn’t work they flooded the city with lawsuits, and now Ms. Price. I believe no city, and I mean no city in the world, would want Mohammad Ali Kheirkhahi and the Kholghys as part of their community.”
Ms. Price was contacted by the Chronicle regarding an accusation that she had followed Councilmember Jeff Allen after a public meeting, and was asked who was paying for her time and why she, as a Denver resident, speaks at Glendale City Council meetings. She responded, “This is ridiculous, I don’t think I have anything to say to you. It’s absurd.” She then hung up the phone. Calls to Mohammad Ali Kheirkhahi have not been returned.