TAYLOR – Residents’ lawsuit against the city of Taylor over alleged inadequacy by city officials at what is known as the Taylor Business Park near the airport has been dismissed. Following a mutual determination filed in the Navajo District Supreme Court in February, they asked the court to dismiss the case unscathed, with each side bearing their own legal fees and expenses. “With prejudice” means that the same parties will no longer be able to demand the same points in the future. In March, the court returned plaintiffs the $ 12,000 bond they had placed in support of an injunction against the city pending the matter. Now it has been settled through the court’s dismissal of the lawsuit.
The Taylor Airport Master Plan, sometimes called Taylor Business Park, was put into effect in October 2002 when Taylor City Council approved the company’s capital improvement program.
It would not be an “industrial park, but a technical business park,” said then airport manager Richard Prior of plans to develop the 100-acre area southeast of the airport, which the city had bought in 2003 from the Palmer Family Trust. We want to introduce clean industries that offer higher salaries. That would really help our economy, ”he told the council. The planners envisioned green spaces, recreational areas, day-care centers and even a cinema. The runway would be reinforced to accommodate Lear jets; New hangars and runway lights would be built. Best of all, the federal government would pay 91% of the $ 2.5 million cost, while the city would pay only $ 115,000, planners believed.
Now, nearly 19 years later, there is no business park and on May 4, 2020, Taylor residents, owners and taxpayers sued the city. The plaintiffs were Aaron and Gary Solomon, Marion Hatch, and Richard and Alice Franco; The defendant is the Town of Taylor Municipal Property Corporation. Plaintiffs in the lawsuit alleged that the city made illegal, unconstitutional gifts to insiders, had an improper conflict of interest, and used illegal parliamentary maneuvers to move things forward, including violating the Arizona Open Gatherings Act. The Arizona Attorney General wrote in May 2019 that the city had actually violated the Public Gathering Act in two out of three alleged incidents involving the business park.
Plaintiffs also sought an injunction to prevent the city from taking any further action on the project until a court could resolve everything, and bit by bit the court did so.
At the center of the dispute is Hatch Development LLC (“Hatch”), which is reportedly owned by Jason and Shannon Hatch. In September 2018, Hatch offered to sell the urban land for its commercial park, which was divided into two lots, A and B, for $ 750,000. The plaintiffs immediately thought this was strange, as the city, as mentioned above, had already bought the property once in 2003, or at least 100 hectares of it. The tangled machinations of how the city ultimately no longer owned it and how Hatch ended up with the property at various times are still unclear and beyond the scope of this report. Suffice it to say that the city signed a sales contract with Hatch on November 20, 2018 and paid the seller $ 292,000 for Package A the next day.
It is illegal, the plaintiffs say, because Arizona law allows for a 30-day waiting period between the time a community approves such a transaction and the time it actually takes place. In this case, the city forked the money in less than 24 hours after the deal was approved by the city. Plaintiffs also claim the city did not receive an accurate rating, and plaintiffs said the city did not provide assurances that the title was clear, which it was not, and it took the city a year of legal work to get it they urged to clarify the title.
Regarding conflicts of interest, plaintiffs say Councilor Fay Hatch, who voted in favor of the agreement, is related to Jason Hatch, and the law ordered Fay to disclose the context and step back from the vote, which he did not.
Then there is what the plaintiffs refer to as “gifts”. First, the Arizona Constitution prohibits governments of all shapes and sizes in the state from doing business with private commercial interests called the “gift clause,” or more precisely, the anti-gift clause. Plaintiffs allege that parts of Package B, which are contracted to be sold to the city at an agreed price, have already been withdrawn and sold or given to others. For example, the complaint alleges that “Jason Hatch Marchell J. Williamson III and Sara A. Williamson, who happen to be the daughter and son-in-law of Taylor Mayor Smith, gave 0.38 acres free to them in October 2019 . As I said, Mayor Smith said it was just not true.
In an email to the Independent on May 14, 2020, Smith stated that the allegations were “wholly unfounded” and that plaintiffs allege “facts that are both false and of which they have no firsthand knowledge”. Smith says two of the plaintiffs “are not even Taylor residents” and some “have previously sued the town for no merit”.
In June 2020, the city attempted to dismiss the lawsuit without trial, a device known under the court’s rules as a verdict on the pleadings. In order to get a verdict on the pleadings, the court must determine that even if everything one side claims is true, the rule is still “clearly entitled to judgment” on the other side.
Among the reasons the city said they favored their side was the issue of standing. It is a firm law that a person seeking relief from a court of law must have some authority to do so, which means that the offending event will affect the applicant’s “rights, status or legal relationships” has the court expressed it. Regarding the right to sue, the defendant says that just because people live or own property in a city and pay taxes there does not mean that they have “automatic standing” to sue the city.
The plaintiffs have no such interest here, argued the city. The parties appeared in Judge Michaela Ruechel’s courtroom on July 20, 2020 and the judge issued her decision on August 31, 2020. The case was not dismissed, but the judge agreed to Taylor City that plaintiffs Solomon, Marion Hatch and Alice Franco have no standing to sue the city, but Richard Franco does.
Citing law and case law, the judge ruled that a person who pays taxes in a city or is a resident of a city does not automatically give the resident the right to sue the city. The idea goes back to the notion that political differences about decisions made by city guides can best be resolved at the ballot box. Judge Ruechel stated that a person must prove that the city used tax revenue from residents in the lawsuit that was objected to in this case about the purchase of part of, in order to involve the court in such matters in order to bring suit to the Landstadtführer want for the business park. The judge said that in their complaint, the plaintiffs did not even claim that this happened, so they do not stand.
But Franco had to sue, the judge said, because his rights were actually compromised when, during a January 3, 2019 meeting, he had only 30 seconds to address the city council on the matter – a shortened amount of time that other moderators did had not been limited to. This was a violation of his “right to be heard,” said the judge.
Other reasons the city put forward included the fact that plaintiffs had waited too long to bring claims, that the statute of limitations for such claims was one year, and the events the plaintiffs complained about was over a year took place before the action was brought. The court has not been able to reach a decision on either side of the matter, as details of this matter have yet to be determined in a court case.
But there won’t be a trial now. Franco wrote to the Independent on April 29th. “(We) could only see large legal bills to prove our point, so we pulled the plug … we can’t think of a better victory at this point than allowing Taylor and Mayor Smith to advance and consolidate Her legacy as the owner of the greatest and most costly failure in the city’s history. It really is poetic justice for one of the worst financial transactions I’ve ever seen … “
Franco also reports that the city has already finalized the deal: “The citizens of Taylor are stuck with the bills both in the past and in the future. A pipe dream of a so-called industrial park, if you buy it they will never come, ”he wrote.
In his email to the Independent in May 2020, the mayor stated, “The city is confident that the court will eventually allow the transaction.” Looks like he was right. In his final comment on the matter, the Mayor wrote on Monday, “We’re excited to make a positive impact on the city as we can have a location for small and new businesses to find a location in Taylor. Our suspended flood protection project is currently underway and our road construction project is currently being planned and will be put out to tender this summer. We’re moving forward and just in time as we see unprecedented growth at Taylor. “
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