According to sources at the Ritenour School District, Overland Mayor Ann Purzner has entered into an agreement to sell the district's lone high school. This is just the most recent controversial real estate deal in which Mayor Purzner has been involved. Most recently she sold the city's seminary property at Wild Acres and the city's Community Center.

In both cases, Mayor Purzner justified her actions by stating the business interests would put the properties back into their original purpose. "I've sold the seminary property back to a religious organization and the community center to 24-hour fitness." Records show that the seminary property was sold to Condos for Christ, LLC which is a direct subsidiary of RCW Corporation.

"I'm not sure why she thinks she has authority over the building or any district business," questioned new district superintendent Dr. Cheryl Compton. "We are considering legal action to stop the sale."

When questioned by reporters on why she assumed she had authority over school district matters, Ann Purzner replied "Because I am the mayor!"

Citizens from the all seven cities that encompass the Ritenour School District showed up at a recent City Council Meeting. At that meeting, Jeff O'Connell, Ward 2 Council Member, explained what he thought was the reasoning behind the mayor's actions. "Ann, you sold the seminary property to enrich your friends. You sold the community center so that we wouldn't have to hold meetings here!"

When the issue was brought up at the recent city council meeting, both Owensby and Knode replied "You're out of order."

Thursday, the East-West Gateway Coordinating Council web presence, http://www.ewgateway.org/, crashed due to an overwhelming number of hits to the site. Further investigation by East-West found an interesting link to the City of Overland.

"We did an IP lookup on the thousands of unexpected hits," explained D Humphreys, Information System Analyst for East-West. "A large majority were coming from users in the City of Overland."

Maybe not coincidentally, the East-West Gateway announced the opening of nominations for its Outstanding Local Government Achievement Awards. This award recognizes the extraordinary work of municipal, county, special purpose and school district officials in the St. Louis region.

Les Sterman, Executive Director of East-West explained further. "We can only guess that with the popularity of Overland's Mayor, many people are trying to download the application to nominate her." Such interest may have also been sparked by recent propaganda efforts by the Overland Recovery Team who has leafleted many Overland neighborhoods in support of Mayor Ann Purzner.

Nominations for the Outstanding Local Government Achievement Awards are being accepted now through October 6, 2006. Applications are available online at
http://www.ewgateway.org/pdffiles/amtg06/olgabrochure.pdf