Coming Up On the Special Assessment Hearing

Dec. 12, 2024 is the small claims court hearing concerning the special assessment. I’ve been working on the presentation, and printing out all the supporting material for my arguments and the arguments I expect from the defendants, the Saddleback Road District Board and their lawyer.

What has been hard is keeping focused on this first fight, when there are a half dozen other court cases waiting to be filed. When I find some document that will help in one of those cases, it’s hard to not go down that rabbit hole.

I try to just bookmark that new information, print it out, make a note or a few in my pro se’ planner and then get back into the current battle.

Sometimes I find something that makes me sit up straight and re-read it… and just get giddy.

For example, I found a case where the state got involved in a road district election where the laws were not followed. The state overturned the election results.

When I get the Board to follow the basic law of providing access to public records (which will be through a petition of a Writ of Mandamus, that I’ll be filing this month), I’ll be able to show that none of the trustees are legally in office. I can then file for a Writ of Quo Warranto, and throw their collective ass out.

However, I don’t want to do that just yet. Why? Because I intend to hold each of them, and prior ‘officers’ personally liable for every penny they spent without a legal meeting… which was all of them.

That’s an average of $5000 each for every year in office. Somebody like Crystal Farrokhi, the incompetent treasurer, will be on the hook for about $30,000. And these lawsuits are against them individually, not against the board. So each of them would need to get their own attorney or share one, but they are paying for it, not the district. And this attorney that they hired for the board? They owe the district that money back.

So, I literally have to check my planner to remind myself what the order of the battles is. I need these officers, and the past crooked officers to pay back the district, as we go, so there is money in the account to win in the other lawsuits.

Then I want these officers ousted. But then… then… 🙂

I found a court case whereby the state basically killed a municipality because it did not meet the necessary requirements prior to forming. The municipality argued that it was too late for the state to revoke their ‘license'(for lack of a better word, and it’s not in front of me) and the state argued it was never legal from the beginning. And the state won.

YES!!!!! That is exactly my argument on this road district. Now, it appears, if I’m reading this correctly, that I need the state to take this action. I, as a regular citizen, can bring it to their attention, but it is still up them. And how do I get this in front of the state? I have to send it through the state’s attorney.

Yeah… still waiting on ANY update on the MULTIPLE complaints concerning Open Meeting Violations, AND she already has the back story on the illegal running of this road district… so, not going to waste a lot of time trying to get her interested in this.

What I might do is create a file with the whole back story and supporting docs, and send it to the Attorney General directly. I don’t think he’ll do anything, but currently it is what I can do.

I will also look further into this procedure and see if I can start a civil suit. I think I saw somewhere in this procedure/discussion, that I can. Obviously, having the state behind me would save a lot of time, but I still think that getting this in front of a judge would ultimately amount to the same thing. It was restarted illegally and has been run illegally ever since. That seems to be what they are looking at. I think we have a chance of killing this road district, just as we told them back in the beginning. I just didn’t have that precedent back then.

We also will be filing another petition for a Writ of Mandamus against the County Commissioners as I believe they broke the law when they actually took a frickin vote on our petition to start our own road district. I said that to the state’s attorney, and she said we could get an attorney and seek a declaratory judgement. I wrote that down and looked into it a bit. But then found the Writ of Mandumus and that seems to fit perfectly for our needs.

So real quick- just an update on that part. In August of this year, we filed a petition to start a road district. I had found a passing statement in an Attorney General Official Opinion stating that people can withdraw from districts in order to start a new district. And so I went with it. I created a petition, we all signed it, I filed it and gave the State’s Attorney a head’s up that it would likely come across her desk, as I doubted the auditors office would just move it forward.

Sure enough, they asked her about it. And while the law says that our petition would be in front of the commissioners at the NEXT meeting, she held onto it so she could look into it.

She then tells me and the auditors office that as far as she can tell, it’s legal. It is a verified petition. So, the auditors office contacts the Road District Board. Seriously. And so they show up and spew their bullshit and lies and then the commissioners think they need to table the discussion.

WTF? On what authority?

THEN! They have the superintendent of the highway department go check out Saddleback Drive. And he reports back that the road is in good shape. Seriously… he must have been looking the other way when he drove past Concho Trail which no longer has a road, at all. Remember, the board had the entire thing, including the sub-base, torn up and hauled away and NOTHING done since. There is no road. And, we were the ones who had put it down, not the district.

Back to the bullshit Custer County Commissioners meeting- the law says very clearly that when presented with a verified petition, it moves forward. Period. Full stop.

31-12A-6. Order declaring territory incorporated–Name of district–Election.

If the board of county commissioners is satisfied that the requirements of this chapter have been fully complied with, the board shall issue an order declaring that the territory shall, with the assent of the eligible voters, as specified in § 6-16-2, in an election as provided in § 6-16-4 to 6-16-6, inclusive, be an incorporated road district by the name specified in the petition. The name shall be different from that of any other road district in this state.

The commissioners asked the State’s Attorney and the auditors office if it was all legal and verified etc, and were told it was… and somehow they still thought there was some option or choice or decision to make. There wasn’t. By law, they don’t do anything but issue an order declaring, with the assent of us voters in that area, be incorporated as a road district.

They did not follow the law that they are required, by law, to follow. So, a petition for a Writ of Mandamus will set things right.

What is a Writ of Mandamus? Glad you asked.

“A writ of mandamus is a court order that compels a government official or entity to perform a duty they are legally required to do. It is typically used when there is no other adequate remedy available and the action required is non-discretionary.”

I would file a petition for a writ of mandamus for the Custer County Commissioners to do their damn job, and then another for the Saddleback Road District Board to provide the public records (do THEIR damn job).

But there are a couple things to think about in all that. While we want out, and we see a couple clear paths to get out, we also want to hold the Board accountable as much as we possible can. As a board and also individually, as we told them how many times that they were wrong and they ignored us. Personally I want some vindication. I want all these twits who scoffed and rolled their eyes to sit back and say, “well, shit.”

Cuz we told them all of this.

An issue I have, personally, with the path to our goal, is that while I REALLY want this road district dissolved (again, because I told all of them that was a potential action and they rolled their eyes), in order to do that I think I need the state on board, and that is just SO MUCH time. I don’t want to wait that long. My back up was the writ of Mandamus for the Custer County Commissioners to do their jobs and not think this was up for some popular vote.

I could send a message to the AG and get a feel for whether that office wants ANYTHING to do with this issue, and if I don’t get a positive response back quickly, I would file for the writ.

On the other hand, that writ MIGHT be based on a date of refusal. Meaning there might be a statute of limitations based on when the commissioners denied our petition. So, in order to move forward on that, without filing another petition and going through all this again, I might need to move more quickly than to wait for an answer from the AG.

It’s possible that if the AG wanted to move forward in this dissolution, they could still do it without my being apart of it. I can still answer all their questions and provide all the meeting minutes and my research that shows all the illegal activity. But we would be out of this mishigas.

The idea of the road district being dissolved for all the illegal shenanigans just makes me giddy. They could start again. No doubt as the same people would be involved, the same illegal issues would continue, but maybe eventually somebody on that road would wake up and try to do something.

Of course, that’s what WE did, and got nowhere, but maybe they would have more support once they had been forcibly dissolved by the state. You’d think they might have started waking up when this lawsuit was filed, but clearly they want to believe the folks providing the KoolAid.

A few of my group think that once they lose this first case, a few of the sheeple up there will slowly wake up. I’m not one of those people. I don’t think those folks want to wake up. It’s so much easier just turning a blind eye and staying friendly. That’s what I did for years. And while there was a time I cared what their opinion was, that time has long passed.

We said we were leaving and that it could be easy and inexpensive or not. They chose the not. Had they simply let us go with their well-wishes, I never would have found the PILES of illegal crap they had. This on on them.