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://www.EnglewoodCitizens.org

If you receive a City paper called "The Englewood Citizen" you might discover a high-lighted portion at the bottom of page 2, May/June 2009, announcing that the City Council has made their meetings available on their website.

Funny thing, a grass roots group calling themselves Englewood Citizens for Open Government (ECOG) has been recording and uploading these meetings for several months now, pressuring City Council to be more transparent, approachable, accessible and accountable to their constituency.

After City Council discussed whether they would continue to allow ECOG to record and publish their meetings, and finding no way out of it short of criminal liability, they decided to join the parade and outdo ECOG.

After all, an official City website is going to accumulate more hits than an unknown grass roots group, right?

Matthew Crabtree, concerned citizen, must be given the credit for his endurance of four hour long city meetings, and his fortitude in pilgrimaging the recordings of conscious. He has continued to upgrade his services to the public of Englewood.

Mr. Crabtree reports that he has started clarifying who the speaker is on any given subject.

For those who would not recognize their own district representative's voice over any other, and what they might stand for, they may now begin to follow topically what each representative states.

For instance, on April 20, 2009, Council resurrected the idea of mandating paved driveways... spear-headed by John Moore, but if you are not familiar with District representative Moore's voice, you may not realized that he is the one representing the issue. II. Hard Surface Standards.

Council is on a roll with "ungrandfathering" residential properties that were pre-existing to their new-fangled ideas. Apparently, their town just cannot change quick enough for them. In this case, Council will extend grandfathering rights only to those who have gravel, while just weeks ago these were deemed dangerous. They will forego grandfathering of dirt driveways.

The really bad news is that any arbitrary thing enacted by this Council will make residents liable for fines, liens and even threats of jail.

Englewood residents barely surviving hard times can thank their electorates for this finely timed gift.

The cool thing for residents to know is that while dirt is illegal in the new Englewood, road base is solidly safe within the proposed code. Residents just need to declare which one they have.

It was important for me to note in listening to the recordings that Mayor Woodward raged against a great-grandmother and long-time resident of Englewood who came to Council for the second time to represent her opinion about them throwing away Nancy Peterson's various awards after she was injured by an unnamed City policeman.

When she originally caught them in the act, Ms. Cummins represented herself kindly about the matter and obtained a March agreement from Council to put them on public display somewhere in City Hall, alongside City Manager Sear's trophies. But, after seeing some scratches and wear from being tossed away, they decided to put the awards out of public eye in the airlock of the Englewood Police Station.

She, Ms. Cummins, came bravely to Council to tell them that she didn't appreciate her friend's honors being stuffed away from public eye twice, and what happened to their original 100% commitment to her by Mayor, Bob McCaslin and Jill Wilson? She wanted to know.

Mayor delays his hottest topic til near the end of section 12. "General Discussion," when he begins to respond to "Ms. Cummins comments" and then lectures her for her "attack" on him personally. It's a bit of a shameful interaction from the office of City Mayor that can be heard in the last third of General Discussion, during Mayor's Choice section at www.EnglewoodCitizens.org. Monday, April 23.

I personally will stick with Mr. Crabtree's recordings as all of the background noise has been removed from the recordings, and they are conveniently set out per section and per speaker. It's much more accessible and transparent than having to listen to the entire four hours of this Council's official meetings.

Link: http://EnglewoodStory.com

A couple of items stand up shouting at me from this most recent City Council meeting. The first is a letter from Lance Smith, who is the head of Englewood's building department.

It was distributed to Council that night, obviating its way around the library's reference packet for the public.

The letter said that Englewood obtained a low grade on risk assessment because it's building inspectors are performing too many inspections every day. ISO recommends two daily inspections because a thorough inspection takes a little longer.

Englewood performs as many as ten inspections a day. Mr. Smith reported to Council how their grade confused him seeing as they can perform so many inspections in a day. But, safety inspections are not a race.

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Link: http://EyeOnEnglewood.com

After Easter, Springtime breezes through Englewood, warming everyone up for a day or two, giving pause to consider what needs attention around the house or the yard.

But, not only in your own yard; Look around. Englewood has some real issues of obsolete housing, dangerous housing, and neighborhood real estate values that directly affect the City's appeal to younger families, thus its school districts.

Can this aging problem be addressed creatively?

Presently, the City Manager and City Council have promoted liening your property in exchange for the city doing yard and weed clean up. Snow removal might also garner a lien on your home. But, Englewood residents need a better bang for their bucks.

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Link: http://englewoodcitizens.org/

Englewood's City Council recently cinched the deal on decriminalizing code enforcement issues, like lawn mowing, and snow removal. This, after many hard years of City Manager Sears' labor seems newsworthy.

While most residents appreciate that they do not live under a Home Owner's Association's stringent rules for hard to get repairs, they've been in the dark over the last four years not realizing the crafty hand of their own City management was robbing the pockets of their own properties.

Residents do not believe Eminent Domain (usurping residents’ properties by government tactics or by well-financed developers) is a valuable reparation for the process of development.

At least in an HOA, homeowners will get exterior improvements for their fees. In the City, however, homeowners pay exorbitant interest and fees to pay off City liens...for what? Cutting grass? Where is the value?

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