County Park Issues

[scarah]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? DE, New Castle County

The county owns a park that adjoins to our subdivision. They lease this park to a soccer club. As it was originally proposed, they were only supposed to have one soccer field and lights that were no larger than x ft (I don't know the specifics) and they were not supposed to operate after dusk. They were also supposed to leave a tree barrier in place between the soccer field and our subdivision.

Fast-forward to now (three years later). There are four soccer fields (and massive parking issues as a result) and to build one of them, they had to take down all of the trees next to our subdivision. The lights are over-sized and operate well into the night if there has been a storm or things are running behind schedule (which seems to be frequent).

Complaints to the county are largely ignored because they see the soccer club as a community service. We are largely unsure what else we can do because the county is the one that is supposed to enforce the park regulations. I was wondering if anybody has any advice.

[tranquility]

This is a political issue and not a legal one.

[drewguy]

TRue . . . unless there were some sort of formal agreement between the subdivision and soccer club that provided enforceable rights.

[John Se]

Originally Posted by scarah

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? DE, New Castle County
they were only supposed to have one soccer field and lights that were no larger than x ft (I don't know the specifics) and they were not supposed to operate after dusk. They were also supposed to leave a tree barrier in place between the soccer field and our subdivision.

You Say "supposed to" what documentation do you have of that? What is the source of this "supposed to".

[scarah]

I am personally relatively new to the neighborhood and I am trying to track down what, if any, documentation they have to these claims. I do know that the soccer club did get a 30 day notice at one point from the county about the lighting being too tall. They waited until day 30 to turn them off, and then they turned them back on 30 days later. Now, they have applied for a temporary lighting approval from the county (since they can't have permanent tall lights). The county seems to be favorable towards this (final decision hasn't been made yet), despite complaints from the two neighboring subdivisions.

[tranquility]

The deal would be with the governmental agency covering this (here, the county) and not with the subdivision. The county can change what was decided and agreed to and the individuals in the county would not have standing to sue. Here it seems that is what had happened:

Complaints to the county are largely ignored because they see the soccer club as a community service. We are largely unsure what else we can do because the county is the one that is supposed to enforce the park regulations.