Illegal or unethical municipal practices

[Joe10]

In Oklahoma a few years ago our small subdivision of about 70 homes discovered that plans were being drawn up to join up our 40+ year old subdivision with a new subdivision of over 200 homes. We became concerned that our safety, security, privacy, and quality of life would be dramatically affected by allowing all this traffic to traverse our streets. In the end the city required the developer to either pay for relocating all the utilities to widen the streets OR block off or stub all our streets (4) and build his own street out to and adjoining a main highway. The one exception was a permanent gate, for emergency use only, to be included on the forth street. The city council voted and approved this final plat, including the gate. Thus, the developer included the gate on his construction plans and also installed a temporary gate. The city acknowledged their part by installed “dead end” signs on all the four streets.

A few years later another developer had bought the subdivision that was under construction. Some of city council members changed as a result of elections. The developer was telling prospective customers that the gate was “coming down”. How did he know that? And the city was also known to want the gate down. One current city councilmen told me that the mayor is pro-growth and is biased towards the developers.

As time passed the gate was “stolen”. To my knowledge it was never recovered or investigated. It was then that we found out that the gate had “never” been included on the final plat. The city engineer had failed to include it on the final plate, a violation of city code. Not only that but he failed again to recognize the fact after a second and final review, also against city code. That despite the fact that at least two memo’s were written to the city council, at the time of approval process of the final plat, stressing the inclusion of the gate into the final plat. Now, the city sides with the developer and refuses to enforce the plat the original city council approved. This is all documented.

The city has in essence told us to take’em to court if we don’t like it. Despite the fact that temporary gate was already in place when the second developer bought the project the developer, of course, pleads ignorance since it’s not included on the final plat. We had an attorney briefly involved and he refuted every argument the city attorney made. But we estimated it would cost $10,000 or more to fight this case in court. None of us on this small street of a few residents are in a economic position to even collectively fight the city and they know it. If city codes/laws were broken why do we need to spend any money to have them enforced? It beckons the question why have laws if they can’t be enforced? Further, we have been discriminated against because we became the ONLY street opened to driving public thereby "funneling" ALL the traffic traversing our street from our own neighborhood as well as two other subdivisions!! What’s our options?

 

[ecmst12]

$10k divided by 70 homeowners is about $150 each. I suggest you get together and hire that lawyer.

 

[LdiJ]

$10k divided by 70 homeowners is about $150 each. I suggest you get together and hire that lawyer.

Read it again...it appears that at this point it only effects one street. The street that used to have the gate. No other streets were connected from the new subdivisions.

 

[Joe10]

$10k divided by 70 homeowners is about $150 each. I suggest you get together and hire that lawyer.

To keep my initial message brief I left out some details. You know the old saying "the devil is in the details”. That’s also true in this case. To answer your specific comment; When we initially started working with the city council to address our concerns most of the neighborhood participated at one time or another e.g. full neighborhood support.
By the time the temporary gate was “stolen” the construction of the new subdivision was well underway and the three streets designated to be stubbed off from the new subdivision had already been sealed off with new homes. As I explained previously this was part of the final plat.
Those of us unlucky enough to reside on the street with the stolen gate learned a quick lesson in human nature!! Once the residents of the other three streets were comfortable they would not have their street opened up… they quickly developed a mob mentality and we were thrown under the bus and lost all the rest of the neighborhood's support! And that became especially true once they also discovered this neat little shortcut of convenience. I believe this was by design. The city and the developer pulled the old “divide and conquer” trick and it worked nicely for them. This is but one of several dirty tricks they pulled. Needless to say this has created much animosity with the rest of the backstabbers ....uh, I mean neighbors.
Your idea would normally have credence but not in this case. That leaves only about 8 homes that reside on this unfortunate street to raise $10k and half of us are retired.
There’s far more to this case. This case has more crooks and turns then a Ozark mountain road. I believe this is a classic case of corrupt city government.

 

[LdiJ]

To keep my initial message brief I left out some details. You know the old saying "the devil is in the details”. That’s also true in this case. To answer your specific comment; When we initially started working with the city council to address our concerns most of the neighborhood participated at one time or another e.g. full neighborhood support.
By the time the temporary gate was “stolen” the construction of the new subdivision was well underway and the three streets designated to be stubbed off from the new subdivision had already been sealed off with new homes. As I explained previously this was part of the final plat.
Those of us unlucky enough to reside on the street with the stolen gate learned a quick lesson in human nature!! Once the residents of the other three streets were comfortable they would not have their street opened up… they quickly developed a mob mentality and we were thrown under the bus and lost all the rest of the neighborhood's support! And that became especially true once they also discovered this neat little shortcut of convenience. I believe this was by design. The city and the developer pulled the old “divide and conquer” trick and it worked nicely for them. This is but one of several dirty tricks they pulled. Needless to say this has created much animosity with the rest of the backstabbers ....uh, I mean neighbors.
Your idea would normally have credence but not in this case. That leaves only about 8 homes that reside on this unfortunate street to raise $10k and half of us are retired.
There’s far more to this case. This case has more crooks and turns then a Ozark mountain road. I believe this is a classic case of corrupt city government.

It may not be so "crooked" as you think.

I live in an older neighborhood that is bound on two sides by very busy streets, a golf course on the other side, and a newer neighborhood on the other side. That newer neighborhood also is bound on its far side by another older neighborhood. Our neighborhood has three ingresses to the busy streets. The newer neighborhood in the middle would have only had one, unless ingress/egress was allowed through our neighborhood and other one. Therefore that neighborhood was attached to both by streets. The city had to require it.

Now, we don't have traffic lights at any of our ingresses, but the middle neighborhood has on at their main entrance because their main entrance also point right into another busy city street. Since its harder than heck to make a left turn out of our neighborhood, the vast majority of our residents go through the other neighborhood so that they can turn left at the light, and I am sure that the people living on those two streets are not happy about it any more than you are happy about your situation.

Sometimes things are just the way they are.

 

[Joe10]

It may not be so "crooked" as you think.
Sometimes things are just the way they are.

Your comments are well taken but I don’t think there's much to compare between the two scenarios. My family has lived here for over 30 years so I’m fairly familiar with the area and the city government.
For one thing, the new neighborhood is not sandwiched between two others. It’s open ended on it’s west side. A nice, wide, new main residential street is available to all of the new residents for a short half mile drive to a main state hwy as opposed to going through our street to a crumbling old county road (really). Worst case scenario is if the gate was installed it would only add about a half mile extra to circumvent it.
Additionally when this development was in the planning stage, the city gave the developer the CHOICE. A choice of paying for widening the four streets in our neighborhood or the alternative was to block them off and make his own street. It was HIS choice, not ours, to pave a new street out to the main highway. The only reason a gate was proposed is that part of our neighborhood is in a flood zone with no good emergency egress so the council suggested an emergency gate be installed on one of the streets, unfortunately ours.
It cannot be disputed that the extra access created by the loss of the gate is a great selling point for the developer. And, how did he know the gate was “coming down” over a year before it was stolen? I can assure you that if our street were lined with million dollar homes as opposed to $100k homes this issue would have never materialized. We have many “gated” subdivisions in our county. It’s just that residents on our street aren’t high enough on the socioeconomic ladder to generate any concern with the city or the developer.
Further, these concerns should have been vetted by the time of the final plat approval. If this was an unacceptable arrangement the city should have never approved the plat in the first place. The planning for this new subdivision was done over a period of two or more years. There was plenty time to throughly think this through.
Note that the plat was approved by all council members with no objections even from the city attorney. I believe the majority of the council, including the mayor, is still headed by the same folks and the city attorney is the same. But for some unknown reason they’ve all had a change of heart. How ironic. The fact is that nothing physically or otherwise has changed since the final plat was approved. You can’t change horses in the middle of the stream. It’s become obvious that there was/is no transparency with this case. There are so many issues about this case that it simply don’t pass the smell test.
This case is as much about good government as it is our plight as a result of it.