Coastsider’s presidential poll is back. We took it down late last year as the campaign slogged through the holidays. With last week’s Iowa surprises, and the primary season about to begin, and California’s primary coming up in less than a month, it’s time to get the conversation going again.
The presidential poll is in the right-hand column, about one page down from the top. If you haven’t voted in a month, you can vote again.
Half Moon Bay has issued a letter to its citizens explaining its plans to appeal the Yamagiwa decision. The terms in the letter are not significantly different than those described in the County Times last Friday, with the possible exception of a paragraph that says it plans to negotiate with Chop Keenan.
The city is open to settlement discussions with Mr. Keenan while the appeal is ongoing and expects those discussions to start soon. The city decided to appeal before entering settlement discussions because a failure to timely appeal would have prevented the city from appealing the decision at all, causing the damages award to become due immediately.
The city plans a workshop on Tuesday January 22, at 7pm at the Adcock center "for the purposes of providing information and answering questions on the case, and listening to suggestions and opinions from the community."
NOTE: Use the controls on the embedded pdf to make it larger and more readable.
Half Moon Bay’s new appeals attorneys have described the basis for their appeal of the Yamagiwa decision, reports Julia Scott in the County Times.
Rather than dispute the facts in Walker’s judgment, which cites many instances of the Beachwood property east of Highway 1 containing standing pools of water before Keenan acquired it in 1993, the lawyers intend to use those facts to show that Keenan should have known the land had drainage problems before buying it for $1 million in a foreclosure sale. If the lawyers can prove that Keenan should have known of the risks of developing that property and chose to ignore them, they can argue that the judge was wrong to find against the city — or that the city, at least, did not deserve to be punished to the tune of $40 million, after lawyers’ fees and other expenses — four times Half Moon Bay’s annual budget of $10 million.
...
Keenan’s attorney, Edward Burg, called the city’s argument "ridiculous.""The city itself decided in 2000 that new wetlands had developed on the property between 1990 and 2000. The city also decided in 2000 that what it knew in 2000 was not known or knowable previously," he said, quoting from the document the City Council drafted to deny Keenan a development permit in 2000.
...
The city’s lawyers must file a notice of appeal within 30 days of a final judgment Walker will likely issue in January or February. They hope the 9th Circuit Court will reverse Walker’s judgment. Failing that, they hope the case will be remanded to Walker’s court with instructions that he retry the case and apply the doctrine of equitable estoppel.
But in the Yamagiwa decision, Judge Walker lays out plenty of evidence that it was clear what was happening on the property when Keenan bought it, and in the period before Chop Keenan finally decided it might be a good idea to drain the land.
The County Times article does a good job of laying out the attorneys’ presentation of their case and you should follow the link and read the story.
"Honey, I just want you to know that I think you’ve made some pretty stupid decisions in the last couple of years. That’s why I think we should get married. If I had control of you, I could keep you from acting like such a bonehead. How about it?"
So begins the mysterious courtship ritual of Jim Larimer, County Coastside Water District director, in the Half Moon Bay Review this week.
Mr. Larimer wants to unify the Coastside under a single government. After all, he says, some of us have been acting like ninnies and someone needs to put a stop to it. But instead of arguing for a unified Coastside government, Larimer descends into sputtering irrelevance by confusing disagreement with anarchy. Take a look at some of his arguments:
Here’s the crazy part: I agree with Larimer that the Coastside is a single community. But I don’t agree with him that legitimate civic disagreements are a problem we need solve. Call me romantic dope, but I don’t think you should begin a courtship by calling your intended a jackass.
At Tuesday night’s meeting, the Half Moon Bay City Council voted unanimously to appeal the Yamagiwa decision and introduced its new attorneys for the appeal: Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe of San Francisco. While the decision itself was not terribly surprising, the County Times reported that the decision received "mixed support from the audience". Coastsider was there and will have gavel-to-gavel video of the meeting online as soon as possible.
"We believe the judge’s decision is erroneous and contains many grounds for appeal ... and we are confident in our position," added John Knox, a partner with Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe.
Knox would not say what those grounds of appeal might be. He did say that, typically, an appeals case will proceed differently from the case Walker heard, which was filled with technical evidence and expert testimony concerning the presence of wetlands on the Beachwood site and the city’s role in dealing with them. Heard by a three-judge panel, this case will look at whether Walker correctly applied the law or consider errors made by the judge — legal, procedural or otherwise, according to Knox.
Walker has yet to issue a final document in the case, also called a judgment, which will outline pre- and post-judgment interest Keenan’s law firm is hoping Half Moon Bay will pay. A separate document, due in to Walker by Dec. 28, will enumerate the legal fees the city will have to pay if it does not appeal.
It’s still unclear whether the city will have to post a bond to appeal or how much money the city will have to borrow to fund the effort. The council voted to hired investment banker Piper Jaffray to assist with financing.
The Half Moon Bay City Council will report on its extensive interviews with attorneys and investment bankers regarding the conduct and financing of a potential appeal of the Yamagiwa decision on Tuesday night shortly after the meeting begins at 7pm.
As usual, we’ll be there with cameras.
In the meantime, here are a couple of alternative opinions on this mess.
A lot of Coastsiders are confused by the $37 million Yamagiwa decision. That’s not surprising. They’re being fed misinformation by people who know better. If you listen to Coastside property rightists, you’d think that this decision was a repudiation of the environmentalists.
That is nonsense.
Yamagiwa is not about whether the city of Half Moon Bay has the right to define wetlands, whether Beachwood contains wetlands, or whether the declaration of wetlands at Beachwood was a taking of property. That was settled in the city’s favor years ago.
Yamagiwa is not about property owners having their rights taken away by environmentalists. The "taking" outlined by judge Walker was the creation of wetlands as the accidental consequence of actions by pro-development, pre-environmentalist Half Moon Bay city councils in the 1980s and 90s.
Coastside property rightists claim to have read the decision, but you wouldn’t know it from their analysis. The issue in the Yamagiwa case was the origin of the wetlands. Ironically, the court says that the wetlands were created in the 1980s when the city was trying to make Beachwood and nearby property more developable.
It would be easy for for Coastside environmentalists to point fingers at sloppy city governments ready to grease the skids for poorly planned development. Instead, they’re calling for calm and solidarity, while the property rightists see this as an opportunity to flog their usual solutions.
Federal Judge Vaughn Walker’s Findings of Fact in the $45Million Yamagiwa (Beachwood) lawsuit clearly identify the rationale for his decision: On March 21, 2000, the City Council voted to deny Beachwood a CDP; took six weeks trying to justify their actions, and on May 2, 2000, adopted Resolution No. C-26-00, formally denying the CDP. The ‘new’ wetlands, that the City created, were at the heart of the denial. Council member Toni Taylor made that motion and Debbie Ruddock seconded it.
In order to understand how that happened, we need to ask ourselves a few questions; some of those questions might include:
1) Who were the Council members that made that decision?
2) How did each one vote?
3) What political faction had the majority on the Council?
4) Who was on the Planning Commission at that time?
5) Which Council member appointed each of the Planning Commissioners?
6) How much influence did members of the Planning Commission have in the decision?
7) Who sat on, and controlled, the Water Board (CCWD)?
8) What political faction controlled the City?
Here are the answers:
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