Eye On Englewood

Link: http://www.englewoodcitizens.org/

About fifteen years ago, Englewood enacted a Special Concrete District. This, despite the fact that Englewood already had about 10 times more districts than other municipalities. What an auditing nightmare! But that is not the focus of this piece.

This piece focuses on the fraud of the concrete district scheme itself. In order to create a new tax, and enact the district, City Manager had to feign a disadvantage. Then, he frightened residents into membership for their own protection. Sound anything like a thug making his mark? How did City Manager Sears accomplish this? By, completely ignoring your property boundaries.

Englewood started insisting that concrete sidewalks needed to be upgraded, sending notices to residents. Englewood insisted that the private property owners would be required to pay for the new cement repairs in full. The City required home owners to pay up immediately, short of buying into the new district. Property owners then examined the broken sidewalks and agree, yes, they need repair, and no, I cannot pay for hundreds of dollars, and furthermore, I don't know how to fight city hall. Bingo! City scored!

Very few residents possessed site plans, and they didn't believe that their trusted servants in government could outright lie to them about fiscal liabilities without being caught. So, over time, more and more private property owners began to assume their shares and payments into the concrete district.

The scheme goes this way: If you agree to buy into the district, then when you sell your home, the new owner automatically assumes the concrete debt, and the new owner has no right of redress within the City. This obviates your First Constitutional Right to redress government. Now, ain't that special?

But this month, a family took the Mayor and City Manager to District Court, because it is a higher court than the Englewood Municipal Court which judge is in bed with certain City officers. This family obtained a temporary restraining order against the City regarding the concrete district. They deserve a gold banner, for resourcefulness, don't you think?

Since purchasing their home in 2006, they had requested that Englewood repair their front heaving sidewalk. Every year, they sent letters, and every year, Englewood refused and ignored them. The problem was that an healthy 80 year old tree had roots that heaved the pavement.

Englewood refused to correct the problem unless the new owners allowed them to cut down the 80 foot tall shade tree and replace it with a sapling. Although the owners suggested Englewood correct the slope of the street which was causing various hazards in the winter at the bottom of the block, by simply raising the sidewalk over the tree roots, Englewood refused. The owners then suggested Englewood make the sidewalk bump out in a semi-circle around the base of the tree, separating parking spaces in the frontage. Again, Englewood refused.

Englewood's letters refused to cooperate with the City's engineering and paving departments or with the homeowners, even though the sidewalk was causing a severe stumbling liability. Englewood refused to perform due diligence for creative alternatives to save the tree by inquiring with an arborist. But, Englewood also abandoned the property to the owners three years ago, saying in a letter that the land at the front of their property belonged to the home owners.

The letter went on to say that if Englewood did cut the tree roots, the property owners would have to sign a letter to assume all future liability in case the tree became unstable in a storm and fell on a house in the neighborhood, due to the City's sloppy choice of actions!

The situation came to a head when the City decided to do whatever it wanted to the tree, the home owners' rights, and the sidewalk, without notifying the private owners at all. Home downers believed they had some rights to know whose property it really was, or who would pay for what, or whether the owners would lose the tree. The owners took the City to Court and won an injunction. They easily proved the City was about to perform some urgent irreparable harm to the tree and the threat of the tree falling on a home as well.

I wonder why they didn't take this further and suggest irreparable harm was about to occur to their right to redress government or their own safety and welfare?

The Judge required the City to hire an arborist and perform due diligence. Because of this situation, I have looked into the Colorado Statutes on Special Districts which do require cooperation with all the parties when there is an easement or right of way privilege onto any given property.

The City's constitutional duty is to protect the health, safety and welfare of a neighborhood, as regarding the slope of the street and the health of the tree. Additionally, Englewood was not allowed to recklessly abandon public property to a private residence and then take it back like Indian Givers when it suited them.

The law of right-of-ways is that government may well own the real property, (usually frontage or alley ways) while private residents may own right of way access to their site from both the front street and the back alley. Additionally, utility companies own a right to access their telephone poles or city ditches on any property, whether owned by government or private owners.

Englewood had abandoned their frontage rights to own the real property in front of these residents' site plan in order to sell shares into the concrete district. And these owners had continued to pay. Thus, the City had an absolute duty to repair the concrete...three years ago.

The City perpetrated fraud against its own people in order to gain a financial advantage over residents, like these, to make them pay for the same duty Englewood always held to maintain its own neighborhood sidewalks. Taxes were already there for new concrete. But, after paying for years, the government refused to perform its duty to cooperate with the home owners and do the job properly. The district judge stopped short of telling the City how to do its job

Do you have a "Notice" stating that Englewood will do something on "your property?" You should find out what your site survey actually says from your Title Company, or hire a survey company to mark the edges. The wording on Englewood's Notice may well be deceptive. If the weeds belong to the City, then, the City owns the duty to trim and care for them. What would happen if residents began noticing the City with 14-day warnings to pull weeds, or repair sidewalks? That's so backwards.

Link: http://englewoodstory.com

I will go so far as to say this: Everything in a City is grandfathered unless the City is able to prove some license to regulate it.

O, Where O Where doth such a license cometh from?

In Colorado municipalities, they come from Colorado Revised Statutes Title 31, Municipal Governments, michies Colorado free legal which limits powers and are given further boundaries through none other than the Supreme Law of the Land, our great United States Constitution.

These laws clearly state that someone's power, presumed authority or "will" cannot legally over-power or control what rights the law has handed to me already. The mass lynchings are illegal because they are not founded in deference, self-respect or law.

It doesn't matter how much sweaty fervor is passionately invoked or what kind of bribe or slander occurs, if it ain't founded in law, it ain't no good.

Last week in the Englewood Council meeting when Bob McCaslin accidentally, or perhaps conveniently left out of the pre-written invocation, "Help us not to control..." I had to chuckle. Well, it just escaped. I didn't mean to be irreverent. But "arbitrary control" is exactly what this Council loves to do to this fair city by their own elected whims.

But just because they are elected and it is hard to get them unseated, doesn't mean that they have legal rights to presume license over all aspects of residential home lives.

Last week at Council, John Moore played the roll of Mayor and controlled the discussion on Hard Pavements himself. He kept wanting to know what would be "grandfathered" as if Council can simply ignore the City Ordinances and Savings Clauses and has utter authority over the private homes as well as licensed businesses. Near the end of the discussion Moore says, "So what are we choosing to grandfather then? Only gravel?"

Stand Up, people! Where is the Council's license to tell you where or how you can park on your own property?

Once an idea gets passed legislatively, then the full burden of proof rests on one defendant's shoulders, inconveniently cited and hauled to the Judge, to prove that the legislation is unfounded. Since it is the legal duty of the municipal judge to presume the law is reasonable, this individual must have a very strong mind with plenty of time available to find out where the missing links are and present them to the Judge or jury accordingly. If he doesn't have these resources, the illegal law can be established judicially, and then it is almost impossible to over-rule.

So the old maxim stands that all it takes for evil to win is for good men to do nothing.

If you choose not to trust your gut, or defend your right to serve, your right of easement, your immunities, your right to real estate, then you forfeit not only the right, but also the law that governs the right. And if you forfeit the law, you betray your fellow man who depends on that same law.

I was trying to stay one step ahead of myself but now I walk on my hands and don’t look back...

"Though the law itself be fair on its face and impartial in appearance, yet, if it is applied and administered by public authority with an evil eye and an unequal [118 U.S. 374] hand, so as practically to make unjust and illegal discriminations between persons in similar circumstances, material to their rights, the denial of equal justice is still within the prohibition of the Constitution. This principle of interpretation has been sanctioned by this court in Henderson v. Mayor of New York, 92 U.S. 259; Chy Lung v. Freeman, 92 U.S. 275; Ex parte Virginia, 100 U.S. 339; Neal v. Delaware, 103 U.S. 370, and Soon Hing v. Crowley, 113 U.S. 703. Soon Hing v. Crowley, 113 U.S. 703." See, Yick Wo v. Yick Wo v. Hopkins
Submitted April 14, 1886, Decided May 10, 1886,118 U.S. 356.
APPEAL FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
FOR THE DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

How do we know what rights we have fundamentally? Consider the Privileges or Immunities clause of the US Constitution. One author has then suggested normal people go to the laws of the District of Columbia to see what's fair there. Another suggests that whatever is fair in all the states is fair in your state.

"It is accordingly enacted by § 1977 of the Revised Statutes, that all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the same right in every State and Territory to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, give evidence, and to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property as is enjoyed by white citizens and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, penalties, taxes, licenses, and exactions of every kind, and to no other." (See Above, Yick Wo)

I was really scared that Yick Wo, the laundry proprietor, would only protect those narrow civil rights laws specifically written, but when I went to read that case it was as clear as the blue Colorado skies that everyone in America has the right to make and enforce contracts, to sue, to be parties, to give evidence and to enjoy the full benefit and duties of all laws and policies and access to government and court, and to remain secure in their persons and property.

Neighbors must work hard to subdue your greed, subdue your bias, and subdue being lazy entitled ingrates. Seriously!

Whatever gets sold out for some selfish or shady benefit today, will come back to bite not only you and your white Englewood neighbors and your white grandchildren, but me and my household too because the rest of us have rights only equal to yours, and then your rights are only equal to mine. You need to stand up like responsible, dutiful adults now. I don't want to take the water slide down with you.

W