All posts by Mike

Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Los Angeles City Government

In 2013 Kerry Morrison Told The City Council That Without City Oversight Of BID Compliance With The Public Records Act “It Is Very Possible That One Of The BID Boards Would Be Sued, Which Would Also Involve The City” — This Despite Decades Of Kerry Morrison’s Refusing To Have Her BID Be Overseen In Any Way — Protesting Any Proposed Oversight Schemes — And Repeatedly Violating The Brown Act And CPRA In Flamboyantly Intentional Ways

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It seems that in 2013 the City was considering transferring BID management functions away from the City Clerk to some to-be-created Office of Imaginary Money-Shuffling Practices or suchlike nonsense. Obviously it didn’t happen, but nevertheless we’re still as lucky as can be to have recently discovered a copy of a letter written by Ms. Kerry Morrison, chock-full of her characteristically narcissistic stylings, in support of keeping BIDditude with the Clerk.

Her unwritten point is that the Clerk’s BID unit is already firmly under the thumb of the BIDs,1 and any change would be detrimental to the BIDs, therefore no change should be made, whatever the needs of the City, and these she really does not deign to consider, might be. Her written points are more prosaic, and except for one of these the interest mainly lies in counting her weirdly nonconscious invocation of cliches.2

Her sole interesting point, and it’s interesting mostly for the way it highlights her absolute indifference towards the truth, has to do with one of our favorite topics on this blog, which is the intersection of BIDdology with the Brown Act and the Public Records Act:

Because of litigation that our BID was involved in at the turn of the century, the boards that manage BIDs are now subject to the Public Records Act and the Brown Act. The City Clerk’s staff helps to ensure compliance. Absent this oversight, it is very possible that one of the BID boards would be sued, which would also involve the city of LA.

Unfortunately I don’t have the time to dissect the unselfconsciously sprinkled self-satisfied hermeneutics of this lil cupcake of a prose poem, However, let’s move past the break and consider some of the inaccuracies and omissions. And, of course, there’s also a transcription of the whole damn letter.
Continue reading In 2013 Kerry Morrison Told The City Council That Without City Oversight Of BID Compliance With The Public Records Act “It Is Very Possible That One Of The BID Boards Would Be Sued, Which Would Also Involve The City” — This Despite Decades Of Kerry Morrison’s Refusing To Have Her BID Be Overseen In Any Way — Protesting Any Proposed Oversight Schemes — And Repeatedly Violating The Brown Act And CPRA In Flamboyantly Intentional Ways →

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Street Vending

SB-946, Ricardo Lara’s Monumental Street Vending Legalization Bill, Approved By Legislature — Now On To Governor!

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On Monday the Assembly passed Ricardo Lara’s monumental street vending regulation bill, SB 946, and sent it back to the Senate for re-approval, a step which was made necessary by some minor amendments. Yesterday, putting a successful end to a seven month legislative process, the Senate approved it 24 to 12. It is now in the hands of the governor.

This bill, if signed by Jerry Brown, will put severe limits on the ability of cities to regulate or ban street vending. In particular, it will make it impossible to ban them from certain areas without objective health and safety concerns and it will make it impossible for any city’s regulatory scheme to include approval by surrounding businesses or property owners. It explicitly defines the allowable range of “objective” concerns to exclude community animus.

These two clauses alone will radically alter the situation in Los Angeles, where zillionaires of all stripes, but especially BIDs, have fought long and hard to include them in any street vending law here probably because they’re so easily abused. This bill would, among many, many other consequential effects, overturn the City’s ridiculously specific bans on street vending on Hollywood Blvd and prohibit individual City Councilmembers from unilaterally banning vending in their districts at the behest of BIDs and other zillionaire-aligned interest groups.

Turn the page for a transcription of the legislature’s analysis of the final version of the bill.
Continue reading SB-946, Ricardo Lara’s Monumental Street Vending Legalization Bill, Approved By Legislature — Now On To Governor! →

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Brown Act Pragmatics, Business Improvement Districts

Kicking Off Our New Brown Act Enforcement Project With A Demand Letter To The Byzantine Latino Quarter BID Insisting That Their Advisory Board Of Directors Stop Discussing Public Business In Secret Via Email — With A Writ Petition To Follow If They Won’t Unconditionally Commit To Following The Damn Law In The Future

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Long-time readers of this blog will recall that one of our constant themes has been the exposure of an unrelenting series of violations of the Brown Act by the various BIDs of Los Angeles. I started the blog in October 2014 and that very month caught the Sunset Vine BID and its dear leader, Ms. Kerry Morrison, requiring IDs in order to attend meetings, which is a violation of §54953.3.

Since then it’s just been one damn thing after another, what with the South Park BIDdies refusing to share documents considered by their board at a meeting, or requiring meeting attendees to sign in, or their teleconferencing fiasco, or the Venice Beach BID’s deficient agenda descriptions, or the Central City East Association‘s discussing and voting on matters that were not agendized, or the East Hollywood BID‘s teleconferencing violations, and those aren’t even the worst of the bunch.

One of the most important prohibitions imposed by the Brown Act is found at §54952.2(b), which states that “[a] majority of the members of a legislative body shall not, outside a meeting authorized by this chapter, use a series of communications of any kind, directly or through intermediaries, to discuss, deliberate, or take action on any item of business that is within the subject matter jurisdiction of the legislative body.”

In the past we have seen shameless, egregious violations of this section, e.g. the Pacific Palisades BID in 2016, or also by the Central City East Association as part of their relentlessly immoral, illegal campaign against the formation of a Skid Row Neighborhood Council, and by the Los Feliz Village BID, whose violation of §54952.2(b) was bad enough that it actually earned them a written rebuke from the Public Integrity Division of the Los Angeles County District Attorney.

That last outcome has been an anomaly, though. Despite my having filed multiple reports against BIDs for serious violations of the Brown Act, the District Attorney has, to date, ignored all of them but the Los Feliz one.3 But the legislature, oh wise and omniscient!, has determined that Brown Act enforcement is too important to be left only up to the whims of County District Attorneys. They’ve also allowed for private citizens to enforce the law as well!

So this time, when I discovered dispositive evidence that the Byzantine Latino Quarter BID had violated §54952.2(b) of the Brown Act on at least two occasions earlier this year by discussing BID business in private via email I decided that I would take matters into my own hands rather than relying on the County DA to handle the violation. And the violations are really extreme and also somewhat lurid. One involves BID board member and Greek Orthodox priest Father John Bakas arguing against homeless shelters on the grounds that homeless people are dangerous and incorrigible, e.g.

Of course, it took some time and effort to study the law, get professional advice, and generally prepare an infrastructure for the private prosecution of such violations. Now that it’s all set up, it’s not just good for this one violation, but will work for all future violations that come to my attention. Thus it is with a great deal of pride that I announce an ongoing project to force the BIDs of Los Angeles to stop violating the Brown Act by prosecuting them myself if necessary! Turn the page for the legal theories involved and the specific details of the BLQBID’s violations!
Continue reading Kicking Off Our New Brown Act Enforcement Project With A Demand Letter To The Byzantine Latino Quarter BID Insisting That Their Advisory Board Of Directors Stop Discussing Public Business In Secret Via Email — With A Writ Petition To Follow If They Won’t Unconditionally Commit To Following The Damn Law In The Future →

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Street Vending

Ricardo Lara’s Street Vending Bill SB-946 Passed By Assembly — Now Back To Senate For Approval Of Amendments — Then On To The Governor’s Office

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For background take a look at this fine article in the Times by Emily Alpert Reyes.

Ricardo Lara’s monumental street vending regulation bill, SB-946, was read in the Assembly for the third time yesterday and passed 56 to 17 on a straight party-line vote.4 Because it was amended in the Assembly, notably here and here, it has to go back to the Senate for one more vote before heading to the Governor’s office.

The bill is universally opposed by Los Angeles BIDdies. Led by Carol Schatz of the Central City Association, they have been opposing it vigorously since its introduction in January 2018. Their overwrought terror of this bill is a natural consequence of their unhinged, years-long opposition to street vending in Los Angeles despite the essential role it plays in the social and cultural life of this City.

Surprisingly, the political juice of the BIDdies has availed them not in this particular struggle. We’ve seen how they’re able to reach out even all the way to Sacramento to kill off bills that threaten their plutocratic reign over almost every aspect of our daily life. But here, it’s not working. Even Miguel Freaking Santiago, their flunky in every possible situation, voted for SB-946.

A veto from Jerry Brown is their last hope. And maybe they’ll get it, who knows? You can bet what passes for good money in these latter days of the economy that they’re working on him right now. And if they manage to talk him around to their point of view, it’s the end of the matter, since our esteemed legislature is never ever going to override him. Anyway, I don’t know how long it’ll take for this to come up before the Senate, but you’ll hear about it here when it does!
Continue reading Ricardo Lara’s Street Vending Bill SB-946 Passed By Assembly — Now Back To Senate For Approval Of Amendments — Then On To The Governor’s Office →

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Business Improvement Districts, Lawsuits, Public Records Act Pragmatics

Chinatown Business Improvement District Sued To Enforce Compliance With California Public Records Act — The Brick-By-Brick Dismantling Of Pyschopathic Rageball George Yu’s Backwater Cult-Like Totalitarian Empire Has Begun!

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On Friday a petition was filed in LA County Superior Court against George Yu’s corrupt little empire, the Chinatown Business Improvement District. You’ll recall George Yu, of course,as the caudillo of Chinatown, the man who screams at people for legally filming his meetings without approval, the man who had me ejected from his glorified strip mall for daring to defy his unlawful orders, the man who smugly admits to serious legal violations on camera because history has taught him that there will be no consequences.

Well, it turns out that he’s also the man who thinks that he can ignore people’s requests for public records for more than a year without even answering. We’re hoping this petition, which is a little different from most of the ones I report on here in that Katherine McNenny and I filed it jointly, will teach him the error of his ways, at least with respect to the CPRA.

The whole thing started in May 2017 when, after it became clear that George Yu had played a central role in the Downtown BIDs’ underhanded conspiracy to torpedo the Skid Row Neighborhood Council subdivision effort, Katherine McNenny requested a bunch of records on this topic from the Chinatown BID.5 He did not even respond, and has not responded yet, which is a clear violation of the law.6

Independently of Katherine McNenny’s requests but for the same purpose, in March 2018 I sent George Yu three requests also, slightly broader than hers but still focused on the SRNC formation effort and George Yu’s role in sinking it. He also ignored these requests. To date he has not even made the initial response required by §6253(c). For reasons I will never understand George Yu7 thinks its better to break the law repeatedly and then pay potentially tens of thousands of dollars as a consequence than to just comply in the first damn place.

And that’s what’s going on with the Chinatown BID. Turn the page for some transcribed excerpts!
Continue reading Chinatown Business Improvement District Sued To Enforce Compliance With California Public Records Act — The Brick-By-Brick Dismantling Of Pyschopathic Rageball George Yu’s Backwater Cult-Like Totalitarian Empire Has Begun! →

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Business Improvement Districts

Pacific Palisades BID In 2016 — Newly Obtained Emails Reveal The Most Egregious Violation Of The Brown Act I Have Ever Seen In The Wild — Zeck Dreck Laurie Sale — Who Sadly Is Highly Unlikely To Be Prosecuted For Her Criminal Ways — Conducted An Actual Vote On An Actual Motion By Email — Not One Single Board Member Objected — The Statute Of Limitations Has Run So They’re Not Going To Jail — But Obviously They’re Still Going To Hell — Cause There Ain’t No Statute That Can Limit The Freaking Wrath Of God!

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I know some of you out there have been remembering such classics as the story of the angry scary fat black homeless male man or the story of the gang members escaping the seething urban hellscape of Santa Freaking Monica and thereby wondering just why it is that it’s been since March freaking 2017 since I last posted any full frontal mockery of the halfwits-by-the-sea out in Northwest Zillionaireville. I’m speaking of course of the Pacific Palisades Business Improvement District, Mike Freaking Bonin’s platonic ideal of a good BID.

And it’s certainly no coincidence that my last few posts about these coastal dimwits had to do with Laurie Freaking Sale’s weirdo Humistonian CPRA aggression. For instance there was the incident of Ms. Laurie Sale’s being too busy to follow the law, a theory which doesn’t work so well for non-zillionaires.8 Then there was the case of board member Rick Freaking Lemmo explaining how they were going to spend 3% of their annual assessments on lawyers to keep records out of my hands.

Well, it turns out that that’s not working out so well,9 because earlier this week I took a trek all the way out to the damn Palisades on public transit10 to finally inspect some records after fifteen tooth-pullingly painful months trying to talk some sense into Ms. Laurie Sale and then a few more months of my lawyer trying to talk some sense into the world’s angriest CPRA attorney, Ms. Carol F. Humiston.11

And good lord, friends! The craziness in these records is beyond fever pitch! It’s beyond Ebola pitch! Can’t easily be measured by disease slash pitch comparisons is how crazy it is! For various technical reasons it’s going to take a long time to prep this steaming pile o’ puckey for publication, so I’ll be dribbling it out a bit at a time. Today’s installment consists of 44 pages of emails amongst the BID Board, which can be found here on Archive.Org.

And amongst the millionish sharp little shards of crazy to be found here is the single most egregious violation of the Brown Act that I’ve ever known to be committed by a BID.12 In January 2016 BID zeck dreck Laurie Sale13 emailed her board with a motion to approve a contract and one by one they all voted yes by reply-all. This is beyond bad, beyond obvious. Turn the page for a discussion of the section that this violates, of what can be done about it now,14 and transcriptions of and links to all the evidence.
Continue reading Pacific Palisades BID In 2016 — Newly Obtained Emails Reveal The Most Egregious Violation Of The Brown Act I Have Ever Seen In The Wild — Zeck Dreck Laurie Sale — Who Sadly Is Highly Unlikely To Be Prosecuted For Her Criminal Ways — Conducted An Actual Vote On An Actual Motion By Email — Not One Single Board Member Objected — The Statute Of Limitations Has Run So They’re Not Going To Jail — But Obviously They’re Still Going To Hell — Cause There Ain’t No Statute That Can Limit The Freaking Wrath Of God! →

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Street Vending

Ricardo Lara’s Sanity In Street Vending Bill, SB-946, Amended Slightly And Not Substantially, Ordered To House For Third And Final Reading Before Vote

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The last we heard about Ricardo Lara’s monumental street vending regulation bill, SB-946, it had been sent up to the full assembly from the Committee on Local Government with a “do pass” recommendation. This was in June, just before the legislature adjourned for the entire month of July. Things have been pretty quiet with respect to this bill lately, and I admit that I was getting a little worried that really destructive amendments were in the works.15

But it turns out, or at least it appears, that all is well. Yesterday the bill was amended, but the changes were fairly unsubstantial. There were a number of stylistic adjustments and a separate fine schedule was added for people who vend without a permit in cities which do have a permitting process in place. Given the fact that Los Angeles has been arguing about permitting vendors for decades without being able to arrive at an actual process, none of this is likely to apply here.

The bill was then ordered to the Assembly floor for a third and final reading before a vote. I don’t know enough about the legislature to figure out when that might happen, but my feeling is that it’s likely to pass as currently written, since they ought to have worked out all the kinks by now, eh? Then it’s up to the governor, and I have no idea what he’ll do with it. Maybe organized opposition by zillionaires and their sleazy advocates has more weight with him than it’s had with the legislature so far?

I don’t know, but turn the page for a transcription of the section on fines with the newly added material in blue.
Continue reading Ricardo Lara’s Sanity In Street Vending Bill, SB-946, Amended Slightly And Not Substantially, Ordered To House For Third And Final Reading Before Vote →

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Business Improvement Districts, Street Vending

If Street Vendors Are Required To Get Consent From Business Owners Commercial Landlords Will Coerce Businesses Into Withholding Both Permission And Bathroom Access — Maybe Even By Rewriting Leases — Actual Conspiracy In The Westchester BID Shows How This Will Work — Did I Mention That Zeck Dreck Donald Duckworth Is A Horrible Person Who Forced A Local Barber To Write A Quasi-Maoist Self-Denunciation For Helping Out A Food Truck Operator??

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One of the most hotly contested components of the evolving street vending framework in Los Angeles over the last few years has been a clause requiring vendors to get permission from businesses that they operate near. BIDs and other organized gangs of zillionaire-identified minions have pushed, and pushed hard, for such a requirement.16 And, as usual, their public-facing reasons are exceedingly altruistic. They’re looking out for the small business owners or whatever.

This requirement, greatly desired by BIDdies of all stripes, was heavily promoted by their spokescreepers at the Central City Association. Their position on this issue was described in a set of talking points propagated by the CCALA in March 2018, where the BIDdies talk about how such consent is necessary for the success of the program, but don’t worry cause e.g. “Property or business owner consent should not be an unreasonable hurdle for vendors it is a much more straightforward process than a public notification process.”

And maybe it should not be unreasonable, but don’t forget that these businesses are situated in commercial buildings, and BIDs are made up of commercial property owners. That is, the very people who are pushing one anti-vendor initiative or another are, on the surface, trying to give their tenants, the business owners, power over the vendors, and it’s presented as being for the good of the vendors. But some emails, newly obtained from Karen Dial’s embarrassingly Freudian monument to Daddy AKA the Westchester Town Center BID, reveal how commercial property owners are likely to abuse such a requirement.17

The discussion, between BIDdological freak show specimen Donald Duckworth, zeck dreck of the WTCBID, and Karen Dial’s consensual Svengali AKA Miki Payne, vice-president for gratuitously creepy zillionairitude at H.B. Drollinger Inc., took place in January 2017, right at the height of gratuitously creepy BID anti-vendor hysteria.

And the idea is as simple as it is deadly to street vendors, who are, don’t ever forget, part of the heart and soul of our City. It is to convince commercial landlords to write clauses into their leases forbidding their tenants, the business owners, from granting permission to vendors both to use adjacent sidewalks and to use their bathrooms.

Turn the page for more ranting, along with links to and transcriptions of the emails, and also a special bonus item revealing an incident in 2011 when a businessman in Westchester allowed a food truck operator access to his restroom and was forced to publicly recant his permission and confess his sins after pressure from the BIDdies.
Continue reading If Street Vendors Are Required To Get Consent From Business Owners Commercial Landlords Will Coerce Businesses Into Withholding Both Permission And Bathroom Access — Maybe Even By Rewriting Leases — Actual Conspiracy In The Westchester BID Shows How This Will Work — Did I Mention That Zeck Dreck Donald Duckworth Is A Horrible Person Who Forced A Local Barber To Write A Quasi-Maoist Self-Denunciation For Helping Out A Food Truck Operator?? →

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Business Improvement Districts, Lawsuits, Public Records Act Pragmatics

Historic Core BID Sued To Enforce Compliance With The California Public Records Act

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I know some of my readers have been wondering why I haven’t written much lately about batty little fusspot Blair Besten, the nattering sociopathic zeck dreck of the Historic Core, third weirdest of the minor downtown BIDs. Well, the reason for that is simple yet appalling. After a reasonably good run in early 2017,18 in May 2017 she just up and stopped producing records in response to my requests. And being the weirdo little liar that she is, she didn’t just stop producing, she randomly cancelled existing appointments, said she’d mail records and never did, claimed bizarro and indefensible lists of exemptions and so on. But then things really took a turn for the weird.

In October 2017 La Besten and/or her shadowy puppetmasters on the BID Board hired self-proclaimed Hollywood Superlawyer Jeffrey Charles Briggs who, at that time, was seen by the BIDs as a reasonably competent obstructer of CPRA requests.19 And after that, once everything was placed in the unclean hands of El Briggs, I received essentially no records.20 And being the weirdo little liar that he is, he didn’t just continue not to produce. Instead he announced an endless series of broken promises, imaginary technical difficulties, unnecessary test transmissions, ignored deadlines, and gratuitous lies.

That, of course, all started almost a year ago, and that’s too long given that the CPRA requires public agencies like BIDs to produce records promptly and without delay.21 Hence, yesterday, we filed this verified petition against Blair Besten’s infernal BID, asking the court to order them to hand over the damn goods post-haste and stop messing around in the future. Turn the page for selected bits!
Continue reading Historic Core BID Sued To Enforce Compliance With The California Public Records Act →

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Los Angeles City Council, Los Angeles City Government

David Ryu Introduces Motion In Council This Morning Seeking To Completely Reform Neighborhood Council Subdivision Process — Only Three Subdivision Elections Would Be Allowed Every Four Years — Starting In 2022 — Ten Thousand Minimum Stakeholders Per Subdivided NC — Failed Subdivisions Could Only Try Again After A Minimum Twelve Year Wait And Retry Is Not Guaranteed — Some Proposed Subdivisions May Never Get An Election Just Because Others Are Larger — Mandatory Pre-Subdivision Mediation With DONE — ICK!

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After yesterday’s debacle at the Budget and Finance committee where Jose Huizar and David Ryu’s turd22 of a motion funding an online voting pilot in neighborhood council elections next year passed even though all four members present said explicitly and at great length that they hated it23 I guess I wasn’t expecting any kind of sanity to prevail in the fraught arena of neighborhood council politics.

And this morning’s crop of email much more than confirmed that dark prediction. Included there in the usual packet of motions filed in Council, there amongst the usual inconsequential nonsense like attempts to outlaw parking RVs on another two blocks in Venice and whatnot appeared this tyrannical slab of class warfare by formerly sane24 councilmember David Ryu.

This motion is memorialized in CF 12-1681-S3 if you want to follow it, and you should.There’s a complete transcription after the break, and here are a few of the more egregious proposals:

✰ Subdivision elections would be held only every four years starting in 2022.

✰ There would only be three subdivision elections allowed in each cycle.

✰ If more than three apply in a given election year only the three largest by population would have elections. This means that as long as there are three larger every four years, some neighborhoods could never hold an election whether or not they met all the other criteria.

✰ Required mediation with existing neighborhood councils before a subdivision election could proceed.

Oh, and for the record, the reason David Ryu thinks we need this putatively reformist crapola is because the five subdivision elections already held ” have generated unnecessary discord in neighborhoods.” The fact that he thinks this is a bad thing is very revealing. What are we, children who must be kept calm by our parents? Is it ever a bad time to quote Fredrick Douglass?25

It’s no coincidence that any one of the proposals would have killed the Skid Row Neighborhood Council Subdivision in its cradle before it even got to an election. Of course the city’s zillionaires would have greatly preferred this because it would have prevented their exposure as evil puppetmasters. Almost every law we have has been adjusted, tweaked, and refined to give zillionaires full control over everyone else without having to expose themselves.

The SRNC debacle was a rare exception, not in the sense that the zillionaires lost the battle. At least for now they won it. But because they had to expose the ways in which they wield their power and win every battle. If this motion Ryu’s proposing takes effect that’ll never happen again.26 Turn the page for a transcription.
Continue reading David Ryu Introduces Motion In Council This Morning Seeking To Completely Reform Neighborhood Council Subdivision Process — Only Three Subdivision Elections Would Be Allowed Every Four Years — Starting In 2022 — Ten Thousand Minimum Stakeholders Per Subdivided NC — Failed Subdivisions Could Only Try Again After A Minimum Twelve Year Wait And Retry Is Not Guaranteed — Some Proposed Subdivisions May Never Get An Election Just Because Others Are Larger — Mandatory Pre-Subdivision Mediation With DONE — ICK! →

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