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Chapter 1 - The Purpose of this Book

How to Fight a Bad Development

WHO VALUES THE PLANET? YOU DO, I DO, THEY DON’T

This book is written for people who care about their community, their city, their country, their planet, but who have found through bitter experience that their local elected officials (city council members and county supervisors), along with most staff members, are in the pockets of developers; they couldn’t care less about their community, their city, their country, or their planet.

The author is not a lawyer, but has successfully sued cities and counties, stopping or modifying several developments local government had approved. The purpose of this book is to share his experiences in doing this with others so inclined, but not to give legal advice. It will show you how to influence governmental decisions about development most effectively, while simultaneously preparing for a lawsuit, should you later decide to file one. This book can also help you decide whether to file a lawsuit, considering the costs, the risks, and the possible benefits.

Unfortunately, you, as a concerned citizen, are really the sole advocate, watchdog, and enforcer for land use and environmental law at the local level. Don’t count on your city or county. They routinely let developers violate law and policy unless somebody like you happens to catch them at it. Worse still, the developers have had laws rewritten to prohibit legal challenges, in most cases, more than 30 days after their projects are approved. Thus, even if the approval violates a law, the violation may be de facto forgiven after 30 days.

Like the author, you’ve probably spent many hours studying plans, meeting with developers and planners, reviewing environmental impact reports, writing letters, testifying at public hearings, paying appeal fees, and gathering signatures on petitions, only to find out that your nominal “representatives” in local government already had their minds made up to approve the development based on back-room meetings you weren’t invited to. You put out a good-faith effort, while your elected officials sold you and the public down the river before you even started.

Why do the politicians and bureaucrats behave this way? Visit your county registrar of voters and look at the campaign reports for your local “representatives,” and you’ll likely see hundreds of thousands of dollars of “campaign contributions,” or legalized bribes, from every developer you’ve ever heard of and a lot more you haven’t. They provide the money their people in public office need to run for the next higher seat, and they have plenty of it to go around. The profit from a couple of houses is enough to grease the palms of those who make land use decisions.

There’s a second reason politicians and bureaucrats so consistently rip off the common good. Developed land often appears to (but seldom actually does) bring in more tax money than open space, allowing county and city bureaucracies to expand, and individuals to move up the bureaucratic ladder (but never local taxes to be reduced).

To challenge the entrenched power of the special interests, you need to be able to pose a credible legal as well as political threat to the developer toadies in public office. This book shows you how.

In preparing this guide, the author hopes that citizens like you will educate themselves about the law, insist that local governments start obeying it, and take them to court when they don’t. At present, they frequently run roughshod over the law, secure in the knowledge that there are few, if any, public advocates watching them, and fewer still who will take them to court.

Every lawsuit filed and fought through to the end, even if not won, sends a signal to the developers that environmental happy hour is over, that concerned citizens are watching them and their puppets in public office and demanding that they start taking the law seriously. These suits can also have a chilling effect on those who lend money to the land rapers.

Ultimately, with sufficient publicity and public awareness, these suits will begin to sober up the city councils and boards of supervisors throughout the state about their prospects for reelection by a public they’ve ripped off.

BASIC FLOWCHART FOR TYPICAL DEVELOPER-CONTROLLED CITY OR COUNTY