December 2020 Update
A surprise, with apologies for infrequent postings. Family illness and business have sidelined me, other team members are fighting to keep businesses/careers afloat and family members healthy.
Our NCA case against the developers of the proposed Post Oak Bend development was heard remotely yesterday by the court of appeals. It was a very abbreviated hearing and apparently the scheduling came up on short notice. Arguments were limited to only thirty minutes.
We can only imagine the challenge for our attorneys attempting to digest this complex case to fit that window and on short notice.
I have listened to the hearing online.
Warning:
My comments are purely the perspective of a layperson viewing complex issues of law far “above my pay grade”.
Tom Hale’s argument was cogent and his presentation was passionate and compelling. He boiled down a great deal of information and made it comprehensible, at least to me. Of course, he submitted a full written brief of the arguments to support his presentation.
In a nutshell, very late in the game, unknown to us, a deal was struck between the developer, Post Oak Bend and First Utility District. FUD somehow found the money and is now able to relieve the developer of the burden of convincing the judges and community that a commercial sewer treatment plant is a permitted use in a residential neighborhood. They now argue that the FUD commitment by (private?) letter to the developer makes the central question on which the case hangs – moot. They ask the judges to overrule Judge Davis’s opinion. Our counsel strongly disagrees.
The question of the sewer plant has been a slippery phantom to us all along with the developer’s plans changing and evolving throughout the process and our ability to find their plans, assess them and respond to changes a very great challenge.
Secondarily, Tom addressed matters of appropriate civic authority of the bodies impacting our case – very complex stuff and he certainly did not have time to flesh that out.
We expect to hear the appellate judges’ opinion in a “couple of months”.
Editorial opinion. If FUD has somehow found funds and time to build a large new commercial sewer treatment plant that would serve the Tooles Bend Peninsula (where existing homes already have sewer arrangements and which would only be necessitated by the new development), shouldn’t those funds be applied to solving the very real problems still confronting the Bluegrass area where flooding is still threatening homes and businesses and where sewage escaped in the last major flooding event?