Commissioners followup

I've written and said this on a number of occasions. On its merits, i'm really agnostic about the proposed 751 Assemblage development. I'm not convinced that a high density urban core development belongs on the shores of Jordan Lake. Nor am i necessarily in favor of the lower density suburban sprawl development that the site is already zoned for.

That aside, though, it's pretty clear to me that the actions of the current Board of County Commissioners are unconscionable. Too bad it's three years before we can send some of these clowns packing.

In the meantime, the only resolution to the matter at hand is to move the issue of the validity of the protest petition files by opponents of the project to court. Either we live in a county where the rules are applied fairly to all citizens, or we don't. Certain members of the BoCC seem to feel that it's the latter.

If you want to show them that's not the case, the best way to do that now is to support a lawsuit against the Commissioners to get them to recognize the opinion of the Durham City/County Planning Department that a protest petition filed against the 751 Assemblage project was valid. Do this by sending a check (put 'Jordan Lake Protest Petition Suit' in the memo) made out to "Ragsdale Liggett Trust Account" and mailing it to Ragsdale Liggett, PLLC, Post Office Box 31507, Raleigh 27622

Want some more info on this? Send an email to mmr121570 AT yahoo DOT com with "Jordan Lake Lawsuit" in the subject line.

Continue reading Commissioners followup

Closed session - UPDATED

The Durham County Board of Commissioners will meet in a Closed Session at
10:00 a.m., Thursday, November 19, 2009, in the Commissioners’ Conference Room (second floor of the Durham County Administrative Complex, 200 East Main Street) to consult with an attorney, to preserve the attorney-client privilege, and to discuss Southern Durham Development, Inc. v. Durham County; Filed in Durham County Superior Court (File No. 09 CVS 004125) pursuant to N.C.G.S. § 143-318.11(a)(3).

As one of my commenters suggested:

The subtext to Thursday's closed session of the BOCC goes something like this:

"The county is going to be sued by whichever party we rule against. One of the primary determinants of the cost of defending a lawsuit is the amount of money and time the plaintiff is willing/able to spend on the lawsuit. Southern Durham Development has already filed suit, and their client has millions of dollars in property development value riding on it. The Haw River Assembly and Southern Environmental Law Center haven't demonstrated that they can or will bring the same firepower to the courtroom. So, the best way to save the county a bunch of money is to deny the protest petition and hunker down."

Just so.

UPDATE: County Commissioners emerged from closed session about 45 minutes ago, and County Attorney Lowell Siler stated that the Board's action on October 12th, in which a 3-2 majority approved moving the critical watershed boundary around Jordan Lake, would be upheld, despite the Planning Department's opinion that a protest petition filed against the move was valid. The County Attorney's office will argue that one of the signatures on the petition, belonging to the president of a homeowners association, is not valid due to the lack of standing of that person to sign on behalf of the property owned in common by the HOA. He further stated that the matter could only be decided in Superior Court, inviting additional lawsuits against the county from private citizens and other groups that have been opposing the redrawing of the watershed boundary. Commissioner Becky Heron indicated that the board was not unanimous in supporting that position, although no vote was taken during the closed session.

I'll have a full report on this development tonight on Shooting the Bull, 7:30 pm, on WXDU, 88.7 FM.

Jim Wise at the N&O, Samiha Khanna at the Indy, and Matt Milliken at the Herald-Sun also have reports on today's developments.

Continue reading Closed session - UPDATED

Yikes! Jordan Lake case gets ugly

Pass the popcorn:

If valid, the petition would have required a 4-1 "super majority" vote to approve the rezoning and amendment. However, the planning department ruled it invalid because the signatories represented less than the necessary 20 percent of affected acreage, and the changes passed 3-2.

After the vote, the SELC reviewed ownership records and claimed the planning department had been mistaken and that the changes failed to win approval.

In an email this morning to County Manager Mike Ruffin, Durham resident Steve Bocckino said Medlin's report "deemed valid" the petition.

"Now that the long-overdue verdict is widely known (and it is!), it is the appropriate time to formally announce the previous error," Bocckino said.

This comedy of errors would be funny if it didn't affect, you know, the entire future of development in Durham County.

How long will it be before Commissioner Bowser tries to fire Steve Medlin?

Continue reading Yikes! Jordan Lake case gets ugly

Should have just bought the damn land

Unsurprisingly, the ruling that the petition presented by opponents of the 751 Assemblage development in south Durham was invalid, has been challenged. Petitioners claimed that their documented represented more than 20% of the property owners involved; the county originally ruled that it did not. At stake was a Board of County Commissioners vote allowing for a redrawing of the boundaries of Jordan Lake.

Had the petition been declared valid, a supermajority of Commissioners would have been required to approve the new boundaries. According to news reports, County Manager Mike Ruffin is claiming that even if the petition is ultimately upheld, it won't affect the already taken vote, unless a court rules it invalid. Others seem to think that the vote will be automatically rendered invalid if the petition is ultimately upheld.

What a waste of time and resources this is all turning out to be, and as far as i'm concerned the blame sits squarely on the shoulders of former Planning Department Director Frank Duke. Everyone seems to agree that Duke overstepped his authority by agreeing to accept the new boundaries, as drawn by a survey paid for by the developer, in a unilateral move before he packed up and headed to Virginia Beach. All the legal maneuvering and shenanigans since then stem from that decision.

The burden, of course, is going to be on the petitioners to come up with the money to keep the process going. The developers, who stand to turn their $18 million investment into a whole lot more than that should they ever actually build this thing, will have no money problems.

All of which reinforces the point i made a couple of weeks ago. The only sure way to fight unwanted development is to own the land yourself. The government's vested interest is not in parkland or undeveloped property. I'm somewhat agnostic on this development myself; i don't really see a high density development out in the middle of nowhere in a county with no regional transit system as doing a whole lot of good, especially when it comes to creating jobs that might be filled by low income residents who probably lack the transportation necessary to get to them in the first place. On the other hand, more low density suburbia is the last thing we need next to Jordan lake. So consider me a casual observer of the process.

One thing i'll say, though. I'm much more likely to donate money for an effort to actually acquire the land than i am for continued legal challenges.

Continue reading Should have just bought the damn land

Jordan Lake update

So apparently last night's BoCC vote was not actually to rezone the land around Jordan Lake, but merely to remove it from the watershed buffer protected area, so that the Board can come back at some near future date, and rezone it for the density desired by the developers of the so-called 751 Assemblage project.

As predicted, though, the vote was 3-2 in favor of the developer.

Ray Gronberg in the Herald-Sun has an excellent report up.
One can predict that when the development is actually approved, it will be the worst case scenario, lacking public transit access, and adding far fewer jobs to the local economy than its supporters hope. In fact, i'll predict that most of the jobs that end up there will go to people who don't even live in Durham.

My head hurts.

Adding my favorite part of the HS story: "Page added that he resents claims that the commissioners are allowing more pollution in the lake."

Resent away, sir. Doesn't make it any less true.

Continue reading Jordan Lake update

Jordan Lake

I wish i could get more worked up over this whole Jordan Lake rezoning case, which moves to its more or less inevitable conclusion tonight when the Durham County Board of Commissioners will, by a 3-2 vote*, approve Southern Durham Development, Inc.'s request to rezone 165 or acres near the lake for high-density, mixed use development.

The shenanigans surrounding this rezoning, beginning with then Planning Department Director Frank Duke unilaterally accepting a developer funded survey of the site when he appeared to have no legal basis for doing so, to the latest, in which current Planning Department Director Steve Medlin ruled that petitions submitted by opponents of the rezoning only represented 17% of the neighboring property owners, rather than the 63% claimed, confirm what should be conventional wisdom among environmental activists by now: if you want to see environmentally sensitive land protected from development, you need to own it. The Eno River Association successfully learned that lesson more than 25 years ago, and the entire community benefits from the decisions made then. Buy land, then preserve it. Don't waste your time lobbying your government to preserve it. Governments have as much a vested interest in development as developers do.

The 63% vs 17% petition is significant. Had the number of property owners on the petition exceeded the 20% threshold, then the rezoning would have needed 4 votes out of 5 on the BoCC to be approved. According to the Herald Sun, petitioners are unable to explain away the difference in methodologies used in calculating whether the threshold was met, since none of the signatures was deemed invalid.

Wonder what will happen if the board approves the rezoning 3-2, and then some weeks down the road, an appeal on the validity of the petition proves successful? Will the rezoning end up back in court again, or will it be a done deal?

More importantly, will i care?
===========================

*No inside information claimed here. In fact, i'll be happy to be proven wrong after the vote is taken.

Continue reading Jordan Lake

County Commissioners in hiding on Jordan Lake Project?

From the Herald-Sun:

County Commissioners have instructed their lawyers to oppose an environmental group's attempts to intervene in a lawsuit filed against them by the would-be developer of a tract off N.C. 751 next to Jordan Lake.

. . .

The dispute between the county and the developers has turned on whether former City/County Planning Director Frank Duke was right to change the buffer based on the findings of a developer-financed survey of the lake's boundary.

Also, the developers have faulted county leaders for insisting on holding a public hearing on the buffer change. They contend that local law allowed Duke and would allow his successor, Steve Medlin, to make the change on their own authority.

Siler's predecessor, former County Attorney Chuck Kitchen, insisted that a public hearing was a necessity under state law.

Commissioners are split on the project, with three appearing to favor it and two against. They removed Kitchen from office last month, by their own admission because of his role in the Jordan Lake dispute.

Siler said the commissioners were split 3-2 in opposition to the Haw River Assembly's intervention in the case. Commissioners Chairman Michael Page confirmed that.

Page said commissioners nonetheless "decided to move ahead with the advice of our attorneys at this point."

Neither he nor Siler identified the commissioners in the majority and minority factions. But it's known that commissioners Becky Heron and Ellen Reckhow are more critical of the project, while commissioners Joe Bowser, Brenda Howerton and Page are more receptive. Howerton sided with Heron and Reckhow only on the procedural question of whether to hold a zoning hearing.

Do i understand this correctly? County Commissioners took a 3-2 decision on a legal issue involving the county, and are not revealing which commissioners voted which way?

WTF?

Presumably that's legal in some fashion, but Christ on a crutch, aren't the voters entitled to know how their elected representatives are, you know, representing them?

Continue reading County Commissioners in hiding on Jordan Lake Project?

Didn't see that coming

N&O:

Wake County has closed the swimming areas at Beaverdam Beach and Sandling Beach on Falls Lake because of elevated levels of bacteria in the water.

The county tests recreational lakes weekly for bacteria, including enterococci. It closes areas to swimming or any activity where someone's head may go underwater when bacteria levels exceed U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards.

Pop quiz - More development within 1 mile of the lake's disputed boundaries will have what effect on bacteria levels within Jordan Lake?

Continue reading Didn't see that coming