Michael
L. Curtis
Rebecca
L. Curtis
36223
North 17th Avenue
Desert
Hills, Arizona 85086-6314
SENT VIA EXPRESS MAIL
& E-MAIL
April 20, 2007
DMEA
P.O. Box 910
Montrose, CO 81402-0910
Attn: EMProject (Electro-Magnetic Project?)
Re: Protest of proposed taking of interest in real
property at 11030 6450 Road, Montrose, Colorado
This letter is our formal protest of your
proposed taking of a utility easement through our farm. Your proposal is terribly flawed and will
end up being extremely costly in many respects. Much of the cost apparently must be borne by us, but we are
committed to ensuring that much of the monetary cost is borne by DMEA. We also are committed to establishing
greater accountability on the part of DMEA.
We view it as our mission to assist those who are similarly situated,
but not blessed with our resources, to obtain compensation and justice. We fully understand this could be a process
requiring many years and much stamina, but, after careful consideration, we
have determined we will fight the good fight, and this is it.
Inadequate Comment Period:
We first received notice of your suggested
taking on March 9, 2007. A letter and
map arrived at our home via regular mail (rather than by certified or
registered mail) and we assumed it to be junk mail. As we were about to shred the mailing, we decided we should more
closely inspect the map, and determined eventually that, to our surprise and
dismay, the proposed power line taking appeared to run through the middle of
our farm. We say “appeared” because the
map was prepared on such a scale that it was difficult to determine exactly
what was proposed to happen. In order
to preserve and protect our property rights and our future plans, we were
forced to travel to Montrose on extremely short notice. As a Certified Public Accountant in tax
practice, the trip cost many thousands of dollars in lost revenue and also
resulted in substantial additional stress and workload compression between the
time of receipt of the notice and April 17th. Worst of all, the time lost in simply trying
to preserve the right to enjoy our property resulted in our being able to spend
less quality time with our middle son, in the Army infantry and home on leave
between deployments, which may be the most difficult of your wrongs to forgive. Even now, I hurriedly prepare this protest
coming off a couple of 80-hour workweeks ending Tuesday. This does not seem much like the American
Dream, to the extent that we believe that something is badly amiss, most likely
the management and integrity of DMEA.
It is significant that we have not previously
received any notice with respect to a proposed taking of our property rights;
we were made aware by friends in Montrose, approximately two years ago, of the
long-term transportation plan, which we then viewed online, but we have NEVER
received a single mailing or any other notice regarding the potential
destruction of our property (we recently have been told that the City of
Montrose disseminates information on their transportation plan meetings in City
utility bills, an excellent way to get information to individuals NOT affected
by the plan). After reviewing the
transportation plan two years ago, we concluded that it was ridiculous and thus
that it would never happen, especially in view of the fiscal austerity of
Montrose County taxpayers. Apparently,
the City and County have continued to host meetings on the plan in the
meantime, but we were never made aware of such meetings.
The conclusion the transportation plan is
fatally flawed is based upon twenty-six years of experience with the real
estate and construction industries, combined with a cursory review of the plan,
including the amount of taking of private property which its implementation
would entail. Therefore, the innocuous
DMEA mailing, including its deliberately vague map, was the first actual notice
that our right to enjoy the property we have worked so hard to acquire and
improve is in jeopardy. This first
notice allowed us 12 days to get to your open house and then four weeks after the
open house to submit comments. The lack
of advance notice preceding the open house and the ensuing comment period are
wholly inadequate by any reasonable standards.
We must assume, and we believe any reasonable person would assume as
well, that your open house and comment period were window dressing designed to
minimize comment while allowing you to maintain that you had allowed due
process. For DMEA to suggest that such
a comment period would allow busy, working people an adequate amount of time to
completely assess the damage and disruption caused to their property, their
lives and their dreams reflects either fundamental dishonesty on the part of
DMEA or a distorted view of the lives of working people. We believe that in the event of condemnation
litigation, the inadequacy of the comment period will cause a jury to view DMEA
as heavy-handed. We hereby request that
any future communication regarding possible taking of interests in our property
be sent to us at the above address via Certified Mail. We demand that you estimate and disseminate
the condemnation costs to be passed on to ratepayers well before the end of any
comment period, and we also request that any response period be extended to at
least one year in duration, in order to allow working people affected by your
plans adequate time to assess the damage which would be caused by your
proposals, to organize, and to seek legal counsel, all while getting their
chores done. In summary, the comment
period you allowed is inadequate, damaging and an insult to the concept of due
process.
Using the Preposterous Roadway Alignment:
As stated above, the long-term transportation
plan is properly viewed as the result of bureaucrats with crayons, run
amok. However, by the candid admission
of DMEA consultants at your open house, DMEA proposes to utilize the deeply
flawed, unfunded, long-term plan transportation plan for their easement-taking
for the sole stated reason that the County asked them to do so. The risk for DMEA is that by virtue of never
having requested an alignment based upon its own merits (including minimizing
disruption to private property and people’s lives) DMEA becomes a part of a
huge condemnation process for which there are no funds for damages other than
the funds DMEA can pass on to ratepayers.
While you might maintain that implementation of the transportation plan
is so remote as to make coupling that condemnation with yours difficult, you
should note several important facts; first, if the plan is remote, you should
never have considered it as your alignment in the first place. Highly-compensated executives at DMEA
presumably are paid to think for themselves.
Secondly, we understand that the County and City already have taken
steps to deny City annexation and accompanying zoning entitlements to certain
property which would be damaged by the transportation plan, thus arguably
commencing a condemnation process that no governmental entity can afford. Finally, and this is an important point, even
if properties affected by your alignment are simply platted in accordance with
existing County standards, one unit per three acres (i.e. disregarding the
eventual highest and best use), the damages resulting from your easement will
be tremendous and after the City and County bureaucrats have packed their
crayons and been asked to leave town, DMEA will be left holding the bag. In order to avoid condemnation damages on
this last basis, DMEA would need to demonstrate that all of our affected
properties are undevelopable for some reason.
We all know better. But for
DMEA’s condemnation, every single affected property eventually would grow
rooftops and thus fund nursing home costs for every affected farmer.
Damage and Disruption to Our Property:
We purchased our 45-acre farm about five years ago
in order to provide higher quality of life to my father, an eighty-one year old
World War II veteran, who currently lives on the farm. Since purchasing our farm, we have worked
tirelessly to improve it (not having taken a vacation for three years) and we
have done this while working more than full-time and raising three sons to
near-adulthood. We have planned, since
buying the farm, to build a new home on the only existing suitable site (at
least without destroying farm land); a large home with an apartment for my
father. The site is near the highest
point on the property and if anyone at DMEA had taken the time to actually walk
the land (not just ours) you propose to encumber, and had you talked to the
people whose lives you would affect, rather than just getting out your crayons,
you would see that you are damaging property, hopes, dreams, futures. In other words, your eloquent mission
statement really is just so much crap.
It appears that your proposed power line
alignment would pass directly over our future home site, thus converting what
we envisioned as a beautiful, million-dollar adobe home to something marginally
salable. We also purchased our property
with the intention of farming it upon our retirement to Montrose (Becky’s
return to Montrose, since she was born in the Montrose Hospital in 1957) but
also fully aware that when we could farm no longer, subdivision of our
beautiful little farm, or sale to a developer, would fund our nursing home
costs and possibly even an inheritance for our sons (even if developed in no
higher density than current county standards).
My father is now, emotionally, in a state of
turmoil as the result of his fear that DMEA will dash his dream of winding up
his life on our farm with us. As you
may better understand in the future, as people get old their focuses tend to
narrow, their dreams narrow, and their worries tend to grow. We wonder how much pain you are causing to
other, similarly situated elderly people.
But of course, we forgot; that’s what your four-week public comment
period is for! We also strongly suspect
that you really don’t want to know.
We now have accelerated our future development
plans in order to memorialize our plans and the future development value of our
property. This will result in
unnecessary immediate costs and also will result in mistakes being made as the
result of the rush we now find ourselves in; an additional cost we apparently
must bear but one which we are willing and able to bear.
What’s the Rush?
Having worked in and around real estate
development for many years, I understand the momentum for preserving growth at
any cost. However, with respect to
development in Montrose, what really would be the cost to the community if DMEA
were to declare a moratorium on new hookups on the east side, pending
permitting a BLM alignment of the necessary infrastructure? Montrose has reached a critical mass in
terms of jobs, particularly nail-pounding type jobs, so that such a moratorium
likely would end up inconveniencing only a few developers, none of whom we
believe deserves to realize enjoyment of his property more than we ours. In any event, your plans propose to gut the
future development value of all land in the path of the transmission lines, so
you can’t maintain that you are much concerned about development values. What would be the harm in pushing
development to other areas currently better served by DMEA, for example to
Delta? We believe the real problem with
a moratorium is that DMEA management would be forced to admit that you were not
forward-looking enough. However, we
suggest there are much worse things than DMEA management acting like men,
standing up and saying “even though we get paid a lot of money, we did not
properly foresee the growth on the east side, and rather than destroying
property rights and lives on the west side of town, we must put a moratorium on
east-side hookups while we permit power lines through the BLM”. “Sorry.”
We believe that such an action not only would be honorable and in
accordance with your mission statement, but also would bring immediate pressure
to bear on the BLM. In this process,
you would enlist numerous allies in forcing the most responsible alignment for
your power lines (and also, possibly, the long-term transportation plan).
Buckwheat?
In our work on the problem you have caused, we
have yet to find one person who fully appreciates Buckwheat. As best we can tell, it is not a cure for
cancer, it does not create jobs or food for the poor, and it does not pay
property taxes or utility bills. My
father-in-law, Howard Greager, was born in Placerville and has lived his entire
life in Norwood. When he was told that
utility lines could not go through the BLM because of Buckwheat, he looked
completely baffled and then he laughed, wholeheartedly.
Here are some of the obvious facts with respect
to Buckwheat: It cannot be terribly
valuable and endangered if dirt bikers rip indiscriminately through the BLM
where it grows, every weekend. If the
areas growing Buckwheat are truly worthy of protection, then some part of the
BLM should be set aside as wilderness and made off-limits to recreation,
especially ORV’s, as the BLM has done with the spectacular Harquahala
Wilderness Area between Phoenix and Quartzsite. BLM lands not so designated should be available to be used for
public good. How can the BLM feasibly
maintain that the publicly-owned adobe hills are off limits to power lines but
open to dirt biking and not worthy of wilderness-area status? Perhaps a more relevant question is why DMEA
has not asked these questions, publicly and loudly, in the interest of
accomplishing your mission statement.
Is the answer, again, that you are taking the fastest, but not best,
route as the result of your failure to foresee what you get paid to
foresee?
Conclusion:
For the reasons herein, we will not voluntarily
grant DMEA any property rights of any kind with respect to our property which
we have worked so hard to obtain and maintain.
You may enter our property in order to obtain a better understanding of
the damage you propose to cause to us, but only upon your scheduling an
appointment to do so. As requested
above, all communication regarding our property is to be sent, via Certified
Mail, to the address above. We request
that you draw your lines on maps in a more responsible manner and that you
proceed immediately to permit a BLM alignment for your immediate needs and
that, in the future, you first utilize public lands for any quasi-public need. In the few situations in which private
property must be used to accomplish your goals, we suggest that the only
honorable manner in which to do so is to enter into voluntary agreements with
all stakeholders, even if doing so results in your having to acquire their
entire properties. We request an
extension of the public-comment period in this matter of one year.
We hope that DMEA directors’ and executives’
houses are in order and that you are living exemplary lives, as we have the
right to expect of those endowed with the authority to take others’
properties. A day of reckoning could
come sooner than you anticipate.
Sincerely,
Michael L. Curtis
Rebecca L. Curtis