Another Bump in the Road

Hard to keep up with the posts, but we got some news today.

After talking to our attorney, we found out that the president of the BWA in fact cannot sign our plat as a representative of the water association. We would have to get each one of our neighbors (6 of them) to sign our plat drawing. In addition to this, we will need each one of them to sign a letter of intent saying that they will sign in order for the City Planner to schedule our public hearing.

A bummer, but not the end of the world. All of our neighbors agreed to sign a letter stating that they would allow us to remove the note from our original plat drawing in the county. This signature signifies much less. We are not proposing any changes to the ditch, meaning the water won't change, the flow won't change, etc. So, much less material than the plat note that was on the original drawing. The only difficult one would be the family that live in GA, but we've spoken to them before and they've been agreeable.

I sent a letter to them (because I don't know their phone number), giving them the details and asking them to sign our letter of intent. We got a note back from them yesterday simply stating that they do NOT intend to sign. No explanation, just 'no'.

I'm going through all sorts of emotions on this. Part of me wonders if they just don't understand and we should just call them. Part of me thinks that since they are trying to sell their property, that they just don't want to upset the apple cart, part of me thinks that they are pompous jerks and don't want someone else's plan mingling or possibly diminishing their opportunity to sell. I don't think it will, but they must perceive it that way, otherwise I don't see any reason why they wouldn't sign.

I am so bummed right now. This isn't going to stop us, but it will certainly slow us down and it will certainly end up costing us more money. I am so bummed that one person could do that to us! Our dream house! But, I don't think they can stop us. There must be some other recourse or path we can pursue.

So, since I'm still traveling, Miles will have to call our attorney on Monday and see what our plan B is going to be. What a drag.

City Process Update

Here's the last message we got from the city engineer:

Just to make sure you have the info you need, Paul Eckman (city attorney) stated in his last email that your attorney would have to be the one to decide who needs to sign the plat since he is the one that has to certify your plat. If he says that only you need to sign, then your project is good to go to hearing. If he determines that others need to sign, then we will need letters of intent from those affected property owners prior to scheduling the hearing.

I talked to our attorney and he did determine that the easements on our property are owned by the Blehm Water Association (BWA). So, all property owners will need to sign. We're trying to get ahold of the President of the BWA to determine if he alone can sign, or if we've got to get everyone to sign. That would be problematic since many of the property owners don't even live on their properties - one is located in GA. We've been trying for a week to get ahold of the BWA President, but he hasn't called back. Once we get his opinion, I can go back to our attorney to make sure he's ok with the President signing. If he is, then we're likely good to go on that front. The BWA President would need to sign a letter of intent for the city so that they know he'll review and sign the final plat drawing.

Our attorney also determined that our lienholder will need to sign the plat. OMG!!! So, I've got a call into them. It didn't sound like that big of a deal. They talked about a lien release, so that might be all there is to do on that. I remember our new loan provider (we will re-finance when everything goes through) and she mentioned that if we re-finance then we likely won't have to get a lien release from our current provider. But, the attorney said that if the lien is on the current property as-is, then he wanted the lien holder to sign. We'll see how that goes.

So for now, just waiting (again)... It will be exactly a year since our first conceptual review with the city on June 11.

Continuous City Confusion (CCC)

We had a public hearing date scheduled for June 11 and then lost it. The city engineer is still causing problems about what to do with the ditch easements. It seems as if they have never had to deal with these types of issues and it's causing everyone a bit of confusion.

As I've mentioned before, the ditch itself does not appear on our property. Our property is serviced by the New Mercer Ditch, but they are private ditch laterals owned by us. The city wants to be sure that no other property owners are affected by our plat. I guess I can understand why, but it is clear that the engineer has no idea about this stuff.

We thought the city attorney cleared it up, but then the engineer (Susan), brought in some more confusion and is requiring that our attorney write a letter to the city stating that no other properties are affected by our subdivision.

We don't know when the public hearing will be, but we won't make June 11. I sent an e-mail to our attorney so that we can get this issue resolved.

Ditch Co Comments

We've been working with the ditch company and with the Blehm Water Association to ensure that we continue to get our water once we're not in the Blehm subdivision any longer. John Baum, the president of the Blehm Water Association, was ok with us staying in the organization to manage our water. That is good.

The ditch company (John Moen) has been telling us all along that he really doesn't care what we do with our private laterals.

I've wondered why JR Engineering put the ditch company signature on the plat drawings, but probably because there are ditch easements on our property. That's fine.

We got a comment on our submission to the city from Gene Fischer, the ditch company attorney that they would need a $500 review fee. Yikes. Just to look at the drawings and sign something that doesn't affect them in any way. In addition to the fee, we have to have a letter from our engineer stating that the ditch head gate is not on our property and that the property is serviced by private laterals. Ugh.

I wonder where the head gate is? We should probably find out. Which reminds me, our water is coming soon. We haven't heard from John Baum about when exactly and which days we have to put water on our pasture. Miles met with a friend, JD, who has ditch water so he could give us advice as to how to get our water on the back part of the pasture. We don't want to raise our ground water level on the portion that we plan to build the house on.