As a Daily Herald reporter, I found myself in an unusual position on Tuesday. I was the subject of an orchestrated verbal assault by members of the Cedar Hills City Council.

With a crowd of residents in attendance, most of them frustrated by a proposal to spend millions on the unsuccessful golf course, the mayor took the odd step of starting the meeting by targeting me.

Before allowing a word of public comment, Mayor Mike McGee said the council would like to start the meeting by taking five minutes each to speak. He asked Councilwoman Charelle Bowman to start. There was a silence, and then Charelle said "Oh, you mean about Caleb."

Clearly, this had been planned before the meeting. And so the council members went down the table, one by one, lambasting me by name. They also lashed out at the residents seated before them for not attending every council meeting, and for reading the newspaper.

Bowman called my three articles over the past three weeks about the golf course "possibly poorly written" stories that took "bits and pieces" of the council meeting two weeks ago and bringing on "a turnout of semi-informed, really angry residents." And that was just the opening salvo of two hours of criticism largely aimed my way.

If only residents would attend every single meeting, they wouldn't have to rely on newspapers for their information, Bowman said.

"It's unfortunate that it takes, I don't know how to call this, a slanted view from one reporter in the newspaper that had to retract parts of the story, which they should have," to get the residents to attend a council meeting, Councilman Ken Kirk said.

This was incorrect. No part of any of my three articles has been retracted. No member of the council has ever asked for a retraction. There was an error in a Herald editorial opinion that was corrected, but that was not written by me, or even with my prior knowledge.

Kirk continued that all the facts were not included in my newspaper reports. He told those gathered that they must attend more meetings or call council members for information rather than reading the newspaper.

"Don't wait for a newspaper article," he said. "It is a shame it had to happen this way."

But the reason for the public hearing Tuesday night was not an erroneous newspaper report. The meeting was called because it was legally required. It was to deal with what Councilman Jim Perry has called the scandal of the century in Cedar Hills -- the golf course, and all its attendant problems. Problems related to the golf course resulted in a landslide vote of residents in 2003 in favor of never again allowing elected officials to borrow millions for dubious projects without the public's approval.

Two weeks ago, that law, requiring a public vote, came up in the council meeting. Council members, who had not received voter approval for a new golf course project, reviewed architectural renderings of a $2 million clubhouse. More on these renderings in a moment.

When Perry reminded the other elected officials that they could not spend any money without taking it to a public vote first, Councilwoman Marissa Wright called twice to vote on an immediate change in the law. City staff and other council members informed her that it would be illegal to act without first listing the issue on a public agenda.

On Tuesday, Wright spoke against those in the city who are "causing contention" by asking questions of the council. She is "sick of it," she said. During the public hearing, one audience member noted that asking questions of public officials is necessary to representative government.

Wright and Kirk then moved to hold a hearing to change the law -- the meeting I attended Tuesday. It came at the end of two weeks of effort by Wright and others to position themselves as maligned by the Daily Herald's reporting, yet humbled because they did not realize how passionately the public felt about this issue, as both Kirk and Wright stated on the record.

There is an easy way to check the facts that were reported in the newspaper. Cedar Hills Council meetings are recorded and posted on the city's Web site under "City Council Minutes." Repeatedly in this week's meeting, I was verbally upbraided, along with my employer. Council members referred to a misunderstanding, yellow journalism, a desperate attempt to sell newspapers, sensationalism, and lies on my part. Before the meeting, Wright even called me at home, and shouted that I was "evil" and a "liar."

Somehow I had caused all the trouble by quoting council members in a public meeting. I had forced the city of Cedar Hills to hold this hearing to change a law created by a 70 percent vote of residents in 2003.

Those listening carefully on Tuesday might have gleaned some interesting details. In a lilting speech praising the council, city manager Konrad Hildebrandt decried "negative press that was not true" and said the golf course has increased in revenues every year since it opened -- which is not the same thing as saying it's profitable. But then he revealed that the city's plan from the beginning had always been to authorize a public bond to pay for the golf course.

This was a surprise. Officials didn't mention this when they were pushing the golf course as a sure bet for a profit.

Another telling comment came from the mayor. In defending the council's decision to hold a hearing about changing the law, McGee said the council's "intentions were pure and altruistic." But this is why I'm paid to attend meetings. The people simply have a right to know about those intentions.

McGee also spent a good amount of time on Tuesday working to convince the public in attendance that the council had simply mentioned a $2 million clubhouse; the intent was to spend only an amount equal to what the city was already spending to rent a trailer, tent and other items, he said.

What he did not say was that the city spent thousands on architectural renderings for a $2 million building. Nor did he mention that for months the city has been in serious discussions about a $2 million building. Council members have said repeatedly in recorded public meetings that to go cheaper might just be a waste of money because the building might not be nice enough to draw in the paying guests the golf course would need to break even.

Also not mentioned: Had the city's intent been to spend only what it is currently spending, no public hearing would have been required to change the bond ordinance.

The golf course is "a bad situation," McGee said. Then he immediately qualified the remark: "Or at least not an altogether perfect situation."

Councilwoman Wright said that the city never intended to float a property tax bond to pay for the clubhouse. Instead, she said, it had always been the council's intention to encumber the city's new Wal-Mart tax revenue in the bond.

That raises the matter of what Cedar Hills residents had already made clear. They want a recreation center and a library instead of a golf course. So why would the city plan to use its only real source of sales tax revenue for another golf course stimulus package?

Wright hedged on Tuesday, saying that she was now supporting a plan to bond for a new city building, rec center and a golf clubhouse. This inflamed many in the audience, and several took the microphone to decry the notion.

Finally, at the meeting two weeks ago, city staff told the council that a golf clubhouse would function mainly as a wedding reception center. At that time, the city manager contacted me to make double-sure I had received the message -- the $2 million would go mostly toward a reception center, which stands some chance, some think, of being profitable.

But after hearing numerous members of the public say the city should not be in the wedding reception business, the mayor reversed that concept. It would barely be a wedding hall, he said. It would be mostly a clubhouse.

This didn't square with what Wright had written in an e-mail to a resident. She said the clubhouse would be a wedding hall, and called that business a sure bet, according to one resident who spoke this week Tuesday. Wright denied it, only to be reminded that she had made the comment in writing.

From a reporter's perspective, what the city did not say on Tuesday was perhaps more revelatory than what it did say. At no time did anyone mention how much money the city has lost on the golf course. A few in the audience murmured about this, but no one demanded the information. I tried to report this information in my stories, only to be told by council members that they didn't know the answer. Yet they appeared willing to sink another $2 million into golf.

As a journalist, I am paid to attend city meetings, to be eyes and ears for the public. I take the salient points and quotes from a meeting and give them the light of day, to the best of my ability.

One thing that the Cedar Hills council and I could agree on was that if it had not been for the Daily Herald's three articles over the past two weeks, the council chamber would likely have been the ghost town it usually is during these meetings.

On Tuesday it was overflowing. It's an example of how information can encourage people to become more involved in civic affairs.

All of the information in my articles can be corroborated by listening to the electronic recordings of the meeting that are available on the city's Web site.

Councilwoman Wright was unhappy that I reported her comment that the clubhouse issue was too complex for the public to understand. But that's what she said.

Interestingly, on Tuesday, Councilman Ken Kirk had "no intention" of changing the "safeguard" of city law that requires the council to put the clubhouse idea to a public vote. (He pointed out that he had read that for the first time only recently.)

At one point on Tuesday, the mayor stopped the meeting to tell those gathered that my reporting was so filled with inaccuracies that there was not time to name them -- all but one. The one that made him "most angry," he said, was that I had reported that he had declined to comment.

He had ample opportunity. I called him at his office, then again the next day. I left both my cell phone number and my e-mail address. I told him that I was writing a story about the Cedar Hills golf course, and that I would like to get comments from him via phone or e-mail. He provided neither.

Normally, as a reporter I don't -- and shouldn't -- speak in meetings. But on Tuesday I had to protest what was being said about me. "Mayor, that is not true, that is not true," I said on Tuesday. My phone records would show that I called him.

In response, the mayor said that if I uttered another word, I would be forcibly removed from the meeting.

Former city councilman Ken Cromar had it worse. The mayor actually ordered a sheriff's deputy to remove Cromar. Those in attendance did not take this lightly, and the deputy did not follow the mayor's directive. People in the audience then called the mayor a bully.

Cromar stood firm in front of the council. "I would not hide too much behind a pretended bad article," he told the members. The fact is, he said, that members of the public were indeed sitting in a public hearing about whether to change the law requiring a public vote on the golf clubhouse.

In the end, after about two hours of talk, the Cedar Hills City Council voted unanimously to leave the bonding ordinance as it stands.