Bankrupt city in Illinois, some years back, lost city hall to a plaintiff who was injured by corrupt cops. This was eventually overturned, meaning the injured person got NOTHING. There should definitely be a requirement for municipalities to carry liability insurance.
Most corporations (cities are corporations) do carry insurance, but just as you and I have a maximum payout on our home and auto insurance, that won't always pay a 100% of the settlement, and just as with our insurance on cars and houses, we have to pay the deductible and anything over the amount specified in the policy. My guess is this is what happened here. They very likely have insurance, but just not enough.
Yes, depends on what liability insurance covers. If someone trips over a broken sidewalk, then yes; public liability insurance would cover that . But malicious behaviour because the council doesn’t like what they’ve signed up to, not so sure about coverage for that…
I live in Wagoner county Oklahoma.----- County Sheriffs arrested a woman. She was a type1 diabetic. They took her insulin away from her and wouldn't give it back to her. She died. Her family won a $13 million judgement against the county......NOW we are having a special election to decide how we want to pay this judgment. Either higher property taxes or a sales tax increase.......This is INFURIATING. We the people did nothing, but we are having to pay for what the deputies did.
I looked up the details to this case. Absolutely insane. They basically tortured her to death and the only people being punished are the taxpayers. I don't understand why people take this. There should be daily protests at the DAs home, demanding charges. It's completely insane that, for cops, the punishment for murder is somebody else pays a fine.
Cities always do stuff like this. I remember when I was a kid, the city council agreed to this big development plan for a shopping mall and a bunch of other stuff, and part of that deal required the city to make road improvements because a big development of a shopping mall and apartments etc. requires a lot more road capacity than the two lane roads that were there. The developer started building, and suddenly the city said it wasn’t going to do the road improvements, so they got sued, and the developer won. So we all got to pay for the legal fight on top of the eventual road improvements they should have just done per their agreement.
Think about what kind of people run for office at the town level. They’re not there to do good for the people they represent lol. It’s to benefit themselves. Ego, power, money, control, and excluding other people as they see fit. These are the things that fuel Karen.
@@stevebabiak6997: They don't, though, at least not for commercial properties. They simply reduce or drop the taxes for that development for a period of time, if the developer _does_ the road improvements themselves.
@@undertow2142 : Because nobody would want to do anything good for their town. Everyone on any town council can be referred to by your slur. Of course.
@@undertow2142less true of small towns than larger ones. Chicago is worse than most towns with 5k. It is a lot easier to replace councils and mayors because everyone knows them and they are less insulated from criticism.
No town is ever too small to not attract people to rule over it as though they're above the law. Leveraging every bit of power they can for their own desires and gains.
People and groups of people, large and small, usually do a mix of what are insightful choices and how far they can push the system. This stew of human behavior helps explain why games like poker are often fun and interesting. This story sounds a lot like somebody overplayed their hand.
Imagine that, the city needs to follow the contract. Arrogant politicians need to understand what a contract is and what it means when they violate it.
Unfortunately, they CANNOT make good on the contract. The contract includes water and sewer services that the city can’t provide and never could. The city council of the time was told that the contract was not a good deal and they decided to sign it anyway. Now, if they go bankrupt, the developers will never get anything they were promised and the people who are currently on city water and sewer services will lose that.
Not all contracts can be fulfilled. In my town the state and a mass transit corporation wanted to run a train from a depot to the local mall. The state originally got funding from the federal government. So a contract was drawned up where both governments would help pay for it. The federal government then went back to the state said now they couldn't contribute. The state was stuck on the money and told the mass transit that they couldn't pay for all of it. The deal was squashed. They canceled the train idea. The most annoying part on my end is that they had to rebuild a bridge near my house and it took longer so the train could run under it.
Ignorance not arrogance at play here. Many of these small town “city councils” play it by ear without consulting proper legal advice. The council had more than ample opportunity to consult legal advice way before it got this far. Reminds us to be careful who we vote for even at this level and to attend council meetings.
I'm a residential construction manager and am currently managing a small developmental, in a small town, for a not for profit. This is the most tyrannical municipality I've ever dealt with. I won't get into the details but suffice it to say that the new political apparatchiks are right out of a Kafka novel.
Montreal Canada, a developer I know built condos only to have the city demand he remove the top floor after construction was completed because the building was too high. He told them he followed the approved plans in the building permit but was told they were approved by mistake. HE pointed out the building was the same height as several neighboring buildings but was told those were mistakes too. He had to fight them in court to keep the floor. He ended up selling his other lot rather than go through that again. And then they wonder why we have a housing shortage.
This is America. A ton of contracts aren't worth the paper they are printed on. Even treaties are traditionally ripped up in this country. Do you historical knowledge on this issue?
Unfortunatly so many councillors and city officials are wannabees - asperational. People not used to taking responsibility for their own failings. It is why countries accrue vast debts, and the ppl who bribed the population with promises paid for those promises with money borrowed from the future. It is OK if it is a balenced system with good sense prevailing - but unfortunatly democracy punished the one who ensures debts are paid, whilst rewarding those who carper the road with promises and borrowing
Cities should go bankrupt if they violate the law. "You can't fight a city hall" needs to be a thing of the past. City hall can get sold off at auction after the court rules the city has to pay more than they have. If a government can't function by following the law, then that government needs to cease to exist.
And then what? People still live in that town and still need all the things government does. Giving city hall to some private individual sounds satisfying, but all the thousands of people in the area who weren't involved in the problem still need civilization to function.
@@GamesFromSpace In most states the county would automatically become responsible for fulfilling the responsibilities of government, but only to their own current standards.
I've done a lot of contract work for governments, and another thing about the "new guys coming in" is that the OLD guard, on their way out, often do a bit of light sabotage. Often, the people coming in are from a different party, their opponents etc. So the guys on the way out will only share the bare minimum required, pack up or destroy anything they don't have to turn over, and they aren't going to be available to help the new group, that's for sure. And each group wants their own people. So even people who would stay on, contractors etc, are usually fired so the new group can bring in their own people or contractors. There isn't really any institutional knowledge for these reasons. It's like if you had a company where you fired everyone every few years and started again from scratch, then tried to operate that way without impacting your customers. Basically impossible.
@ My town is traditionally Democrat because of location and external influences, administration and council members are Democrats. The old Democrat mayor retired and the new Republican mayor has had a hard time getting anything done because the bureaucracy is intentionally interfering and sabotaging him
The problem here is resolving it without bankruptcy only works if the city leaders are willing to meet and negotiate in good faith. Its pretty clear that isn't happening anymore.
There needs to be an addendum to their role, which requires that of them…to compromise their personal objectives for the benefit of the contract and the tax payers.
Government officials have gotten way to comfortable just changing rules to suit them. Even the constitution is amendable to them. A contract is basically a napkin agreement to them
Even the Constitution is amenable? Do you realize that's where the First Amendment, Second Amendment, 4th & 5th Amendment and all of our wonderful rights come from... our constitution being amended... Not defending this government scum but you seem to be very misinformed on how our rights came to be and how our nation works.
@@kritik4lm4ssIt's *_only_* Congress that has that power not "state governments" which many seem to think they have that power (for example, Hawaii's recent state supreme court ruling that SCOTUS and our Constitution are wrong and apparently they know better that pur 2nd amendment doesn't grant the *individual* right to bare arms, only their state national guard 🤡)
What City Attorney was advising the elected council? I truly hate it when one party of a contract thinks it can alter the contract without the consent of the other party or parties. Then leverages some sort of pressure to make the other party do so. (City messing with inspections and plan approvals is but one way, along with the public announcements of disgust for the contract that they entered.) So, put the City out of business, force the council to disband, and make the council members financially responsible for any short falls. That is the proper thing to do.
I have a feeling that a city this small doesn’t have an attorney. They may have someone in town that can consult & didn’t but not one on the payroll because I cannot imagine any attorney would tell them it’s okay for them to do what they did.
From what I have seen, municipality attorneys are there for a check. Their officials make laws that are violations of the US Constitution and the attorney does nothing to stop them . Whats peoples Rights when the attorney could lose his job for doing the right thing.
Well, look at how they have altered the Constitution. Unilaterally time after time with a Supreme Court that doesn't have said power in the Constitution.
A 28 acre lot near me sold in 2020. It's beautiful wooded land with a protected watershed creek running through it and it's probably the last property that big left in the township. A developer bought it and wanted to put 130 single family houses on it. It didn't make it past the public zoning commission meeting.
That doesn't make sense. Are you saying the person bought it before getting the land rezoned? If so, then the developer was stupid. If the town rezoned the land after he had it approved for development, then the people who stopped the developer are in the wrong.
Participating in local government matters. My brother’s neighborhood in MN includes protected wet land at the end of the street, which is any area >5 acres. The land owner has done everything possible to develop it. He set up shell corporations so that the “separate” corporations each owned less than 5 acres. The city wants the land developed so my brother and his wife have been fighting both the land owner and the city. My family has homestead property in ND, and my grandfather fight the Department of Agriculture who back then demanded in return for government subsidies that he drain his wetlands and cut down trees to increase farmable land. He refused and a good portion of the farm is now protected wet land. The beee hives are still there. It one of the few farms that don’t have to rent bees for pollination We rent it out to a cousin as the family has moved to MN and NM.
@@gamesguy When all new construction is pretty much $400,000 plus homes and no one is building 2BD1BA because townships won't allow those to be built like they did years ago, one can complain all they want. Building more McMansions will not bring housing prices down.
@@litigioussociety4249 The developer is fine. The land was probably $millions cheaper when not already zoned for development. When the first round of rezoning request fails, you toss a few thousand dollars to the campaigns that challenge the incumbents and request again from new leaders, stressing how much additional tax revenue the city is missing out on until land improvements increase the taxes on the property. Repeat that for every election for the next 20 years, and if it pays off once you make bank.
@@dennispadilla5853 How often have you heard Michigan natives living in Michigan pronounce the name of it? It's unsurprising that, growing up in Washington, you heard people pronounce it like locals. It's also unsurprising that people elsewhere might pronounce it differently as they have only the spelling of the word to work from.
Sent this to my third-born since he works there. He says "I've seen the construction he's talking about too. Cle Elum is apparently SUPER expensive to get housing in, since Suncadia (the resort he works at) jacks up the housing prices. So very few people actually live there; they just drive from Ellensburg (next biggest town), and work in Suncadia. So the town itself makes no money, except for [the three businesses] and the brewery." Sounds like the people running the town aren't very wise. I know, I know... government folk not being wise? Shocked!
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I remember a controversial development approved by our outgoing council that ended up seeing most of the people who approved this development being voted out. The mayor had retired on his own. When the new mayor got elected, he was very clear with people that the deal had been reached and agreed to by the previous council and as much he would have loved to cancel it, he wasn’t about to expose the city to a lawsuit. The developers ended up pulling out when they couldn’t sell enough pre-build units in the condo tower they were planning. Unfortunately, this came after they had already demolished a few buildings, including a couple historical ones. But at least the new council was smart enough not to try and anger the developers.
Yeah my town is seeing that right now. The last council approve a huge amount of development with a thought for supporting infrastructure like road, parks, schools etc. they got voted out by a landslide before actually construction started. Construction starts and people are blaming the new council.
Cle Elum is on the east side of the Cascades but still more west than east. It is a small town, has a huge golf course, close lakes, rivers and mountains. It screams "big money bedroom" community. I am certain the 22 million dollars is easily there, it just isn't collected by the city. Maybe the county or state but good luck. It is a ”big money" protected place. Those people don't want outsiders in their bedroom.
I mean, it's over in the US of A. Surprised they did not just raise the funds with traffic fines and "arresting money." Seems to be a legitimate source of income for US counties.
Thankfully WA is a liberal state, made up of public servants who don't believe in that kind of public phuckery. EG. Police checkpoints are considered unconstitutional and therefore illegal.
It was a lot more, I think ended up at $43M or something, including interest. They didn't deny the project, what they did was to work against an FAA approval that was needed, while happily letting the developer pay for airport improvements. I think developers are often scumbags, but what the city did was worse and they deserved to lose that lawsuit. But no, it's not pocket change due to the way the town funding and geographic limits work.
Asbury Park NJ has bankrupted or driven away multiple developers and investors trying to revitalize the city. A new city council would come in and think previous agreements were just suggestions.
Developers are locust they show up looking to suck the life blood out of a city by promising growth and prosperity… if only the city cut them a deal and from the development costs…. And they leave town with they pockets full of cash and cheaply built high price housing in their wake
I've stayed at the Aster Inn in Cle Elum several times while attending the Northern Exposure Moose Fest. It's a really nice small town just a few miles from Roslyn, the town where Northern Exposure was filmed. In the show, Roslynt doubled as Cicely AK. This is a fairly depressed area with limited opportunities and the majority of jobs going to the resorts and large developments in the area. I can see why they wanted to do this but it looks like they bit off more than they could handle. Too bad.
The difference is that the government does pay its contracts. The F-35 fighter program is such a case. The prime contractor, Lockheed, dramatically understated the cost of the program (about 1.3 Trillion dollars) and now that program is estimated to cost $2 trillion.. The taxpayers will make Lockheed whole, even though they boinked us in the butthole.
I worked at a hospital back in the east coast. The hospital was over 100 years old and was confined into a small existing space, in a growing town/area. The hospital wanted to build a new building/medical center just on the outside of town, very close to the interstate. It had all the plans in place 10 years leading up to it. 1 year before breaking ground, the political positions changed and the new leadership changed their agreements with the hospital on what was needed to build the new facility. The hospital decided it was better to completely leave the town. They build their new facility a few towns over and closed the old hospital…leaving the first town that screwed them over with more limited care options and NO hospital.
“Special Assessment for tax payers to foot the bill” The lack of accountability for city officials to act like this is just plain wrong. They can completely screw up the situation and the taxpayers pay for it. They’ll likely still get a pension for life or free healthcare. If somehow their livelihood was tied to their poor results, things might change.
@@hughmccurdy3348 no they don’t, the establishment politicians wether Repub or Demons can just play back and forth at taxpayer expense never solving any real problems because they need to keep division.
I was on a church board many years ago that was working through a building project. The church had a term limit in place for board members. The entire board had just finalized the building plans for the project when it was time to rotate out some of the board members. When the new board members came in, one of them decided he didn't like the building plans and torpedoed the entire project, causing them to start over.
We elect people into the city government who don't know basic law and the rights of the people,they make unconstitutional ordinances and the taxpayers have to pay for their mistakes. We live in a time that information is at our fingertips, almost everything we do is recorded and filmed. The city government in to learn to do research and consult the city attorney before they make costly mistakes like this city government has .
Lack of legal knowledge among elected officials is a problem but often there is a huge disparity between the legal resources of a large development venture that will hire a large firm and a municipality which might be using an attorney who is doing double duty as the municipal prosecutor. This can lead to a host of absolute messes for municipalities they aren't able to deal with.
Another variation on this theme, which may have occurred in my small town, is when a developer is in league with the ruling clique controlling the town council. A deal is reached for a development where "in partnership" the city pays for lavish projects (which it cannot really afford) to augment the value of the developer's scheme. These projects are then to be turned over to the effective control of the developer. The ruling clique is duly voted out - but before leaving inks a number of "emergency" measures to give the developer what they wanted anyway. The new city council tries to undo all this with great difficulty (very messy) while the town is saddled with a higher tax rate put in place by the old council to finance all this largesse.
This is the collateral damage that occurs when the citizenry doesn't hold it's public officials accountable until it's too late! That little town in Oklahoma is having it's real estate taxes severely increased due to a lawsuit
The people, and I mean everyone, should stand together and say “No, we’re not paying one cent for your incompetence. You work for us, not the other way around “
If a bunch of towns and cities were bankrupted by lawsuits for the terrorist actions of cops on their payroll it would send a much needed message. This kind of egregious activity by municipalities is rampant all over the country but what do we expect from a bunch of people seeking power to dominate and subjugate the rest of us "for our own damn good."
I lived in a small village of about 3000 people. Our police chief decided to publicly slander a couple of business owners by claiming they were gun and drug runners with no evidence whatsoever. The chief conveniently retired with his pension intact when it was clear the village was going to lose the lawsuit. He cost us taxpayers a half million. We had a village gov't, a town gov't and a county gov't in our rural county. It's been my experience many of the people (not all) that run for those offices either want to feel important and/or want to exert authority over others. People are starting to wise up about how important it is to be involved with local gov't because in most cases we aren't getting the best or the brightest.
And yet nothing happens to the people responsible for breaking the contract, because by law they were acting in the position of "good faith?" There comes a point where shame alone just isn't a fitting punishment for people in trusted positions of power that screw everybody else over by making stupid "bad faith" decisions!
Wait, how can the city make the residents pay for its own malpractice? Why are corporations and bureaucracies never the ones punished for their own misdeeds?
Not to mention I have to imagine that assessing big fines to residents would work against the developers interests, since who would want to move somewhere that this has happened in the past and could happen again.
WTF are you on about? The city is nothing more than the representatation of its people. So when a city goes into bankruptcy, it falls upon its member constituents to pay the balance. And WTF does corporations "and bureaucracies" have to do with anything? I think you don't have a clue what you're asking. If you do, you certainly don't know how to express it.
@@chuckschillingvideoswhy should the taxpayers be responsible because their city council is inept while the city council goes on like nothing ever happened?
@@Fater4511 At day's end, there's no one left to pay the bills is there? And the taxpayers are the ones who elect the scumbags who steal, sooooooooooooooo....what is your alternative?
There is an interesting concept in UK law that the parliament can't bind future parliaments, that a future parliament can make, remake or unmake any law they want. It sounds like these cities are trying to operating under that principle.
That's basically true anywhere. It's why a contract to build and operate, say, a prison contains a clause that the State must supply a certain number of prisoners; ie that if they change the law to reduce the number of custodial sentences they can't just leave the prison operator high and dry.
Yes, but this is about the incorporated town and contract law…which isn’t under the jurisdiction of the town. Business arrangements in the UK with the government are still subject to contract law or no one would work with them.
The city should have never signed the contract. They promised things they absolutely could not deliver. Water and sewer service that the city couldn’t provide. The city council of the time had absolutely no idea what they were doing. They were a small town council with dreams of being a big city. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the resources to provide one tenth of what they promised.
Cities are corporations, and just like any other corporation, sometimes you see cases where the board of directors (city council, mayor, city manager, etc) are simply not that smart.
Ben standing up next to the Lawyer Dog & Quebec plate; second shelf, screen left, Steve’s right. Cle Elum is the home & burial place of Douglas Munro, the USCG’s first & only Congressional Medal of Honor awardee during the WW2 Guadalcanal Campaign. Munro had a Coast Guard Cutter named for him.
You see bad government ALL over. I'm in an area where an auto repair company wanted to establish itself, and they were denied after a full YEAR of being yanked around, and WASTING $100k in rent while they were waiting for the town government to make a decision. Then when they FINALLY did make their decision, they said something along the lines of, "we don't want that kind of business in our town". Then that SAME year, a big business auto repair shop came in, and were also denied, but then they asked what would it take to do business in our town, and the government said as a joke, "$1million". The big business auto repair wrote the check, and were permitted to start their business THAT WEEK. I'd bet big money that the 1 million dollars that was, "donated to the town" just so happened to disappear into about 5 pockets.... I HATE small town governments almost more so than big feddy, simply because they have more DIRECT control over people in their immediate vicinity.
The smaller and more redundant the government the more corruptible they are. In the USA, HOA, non-rural sheriff department and School districts should be abolished on those grounds alone.
Oh? What small town was this? Was the property zoned for that use? If so, there is case law that says you can't stop a business from establishing there. If I remember correctly, Steve made a video on that one.
@brianfrolo245 It was about 10 ish years ago maybe a little under, and I can confidently say that the person wronged doesn't care about fighting it anymore and has already moved on. A prolonged legal battle would only bring them hardship at this point. I also don't want to give out potentially doxxing info, so you can choose to believe me or not, it doesn't really matter. Efit* somehow I missed the part about zoning? But yes, the proprrty was a prior industrial building that was still in the proper zone, and was even near a other currently operating industrial businesses and a full Department of Transportation lot with all their salt piles, gravel, and equipment. So yeah, there were no zoning issues with the property itself, it's just that they, "dIdN't WaNt ThAt KiNd Of BuSiNeSs ThErE aNyMoRe". They even talked about wanting a videogame arcade there instead.... as if those have even been viable since the 90s....
@@brianfrolo245 Recently Edison Motors passed on an old factory they were interested in in Terrace, B.C. because the town would only give them a 3 year temporary permit. The former truck manufacturing plant was rezoned commercial or something. They wanted something like a coffee shop in a building set up for industrial use, including an overhead crane.
My dad is a now retired real estate developer on one particular project back in I believe the early 2000s he was building homes primarily for military families near an army base. The only problem was that the division had a firing range pointed at where the homes were supposed to be built. It was negotiated before hand that my dad's company would pay for the army contractors to build a new firing range elsewhere on the base, he did not want to go through the security clearance process to do it themselves. Then the army kept dragging their feet delaying the project for almost a year on not moving the range blocking the entire project since someone could have been shot otherwise. One day my dad had enough of the red tape when someone told him we may need congressional approval to move the range. He decided to bring his accountant who just so happened to be Nancy Pelosi's nephew to a meeting with a two star general, the base commander, and other high level brass. This was when Pelosi sat on the arms appropriation committee in congress. He pulled the general to the side and told him if he didn't hurry up he would be making a call to 'Aunt Nancy' that got the general's attention. The next week he was notified all shooting practice had been discontinued at the existing range, construction was approved for the new range, and he was good to go on starting building the homes. To this day my dad loves telling the story of how he put the fear of god in a general.
In this case the biggest problem is the new elected city council thinks they can do what they want without first consulting the city lawyers to find out if they can /should try to change the contract.
When my dad did a 60 acre development in the late 80s & early 90s, the city wouldnt even approve the plat unless he gave them 10 acres of parkland (if i remember correctly). I dont remember him being upset by it as it was just a cost of doing business with that city (& the city didn't get in the way once it was approved)
My city in northern California, about 30 years ago was seeing lots of interest in development and a little had been done. We had a extremely good city manager then ,they said development would impact traffic schools and parks, so all this was tied to the development, the developers threatened a law suit and other cities caved but my city didn't and they got everything they wanted , no there was no city bonds and taxes raised to fund schools etc , and the cities that caved regretted it. Homes were a little more expensive here, but because of schools and neighborhood parks etc, people wanted to live here
East Cleveland has owed tens of millions for many years now- they just don’t pay them. I don’t know that those judgements will ever be resolved, or how to make them pay.
My county has 1 city, and until recently, there was 1 continuous mayor. He was in office for 40 years. The longest mayor in office. I think steve did an episode on this. He had a poor reputation outside of the city, but was related in some way to every citizen of the city. During his tenure the county was listed as the fastest growing county in the US. Since he retired, there has been new developments, including muti story apartments. Those were never allowed because it would have brought in voting residents. Forsyth county, City of Cumming, Georgia.
This is why there should be educational requirements for people running for office even at the city level. Imagine they had business degrees or degrees that deal with city planning and development.
Sadly, this can't happen. Cities are lawful corporations (this is what it means to be a city, you incorporate). Just with any other corporation, if it gets sued, the leaders don't pay settlements out of their own pockets. Just as with any other corporation, if the corporation can't pay, it declared bankruptcy. The system worked as it should.
IMHO if politicians & gov employees step beyond their delegated authority then they have personal liability. We need to put laws in place to make them accountable for personal actions.
I don't think this should be legal. I think that if a town does something that the residents don't like they should be able to vote them out and reverse things if the people want to. We're supposed to be a government of the people, by the people, for the people. The new town leaders shouldn't be beholden to a contract that the old town leaders entered into if the people of the town voted the old town leaders out because of it.
Why would a town with barely 2,000 people be getting into this level of development? Of course, with Ferguson coming in as Washington's new King, the developer will probably be tied up in trivial litigation for years.
there are actually alot more people in the surronding area. The town sits at the intersection of two interstates, so there is the whole gas station/fast food strip right off the freeway.
Those same bureaucrats would have aggressively prosecuted any private entity that did the same thing they did. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Government is absolute power, therefore it is always going to be corrupt.
But parks are often dedicated to the citizens as a public good and only become property of the city incidentally because of how the laws work. They shouldn't be able to liquidate assets that belong to the public to pay their own debts.
That's the kicker. The city doesn't own anything, the public owns it. This makes it a problem when the government makes long extension contracts that don't actually fully help the public. This is why the government needs to have development attorneys with a mindset of growth and future challenges.
Parks would not sell well even if one were to agree that the city council owned the public land within its borders instead of just administering it. Nobody would buy a park that people would know can't be developed because good luck getting the zoning on it changed.
I live in Cle Elum and this is HORRIBLE for everyone! All involved are going to lose. The mayor that singed this development agreement was 2 councils ago. As you so well said, the next mayor is where the problem started.
This is the basic flaw in our system of government where the people are fully represented. They are also fully liable, then, for the decisions made on their behalf. I can give you 35 TRILLION examples. And then to watch as those officials get away scot free is just evil.
No, doesn't work that way. A city is a corporation and the people that run the corporation are not personally responsible for paying any lawsuits. It is the same with any other corporation. If they don't adhere to the contract, you get to sue them. If they can't pay, the business goes bankrupt. All cities are corporations. That is what it means to be a city in the US. It means the city has formed a legal corporation.
@@shenmisheshou7002 I understand that that is why we are liable when officials make bad decisions. My point was that seems immoral - for an elected person to be able to make bad decisions that cost others a lot of money while not suffering any consequences. [At the same time somehow also end up making a lot of money themselves.] Of course, there are some laws in place if the elected official really messes up like that lady in Illinois. Tiffany something.
@mikeyh0 That is what people are inclined to say, but this is why open records acts exists, and if taxpayers don't get involved in these major decisions and speak out against them, or find new representation, then this is an expected outcome. Unless you carefully monitor your elected officials, bad is bound to happen from time to time.
@@shenmisheshou7002 Yes, but they shouldn't be making money off their bad decisions. Yet they are - in fact I might postulate that that is what attracts them to "public service" in the first place. So it is not a "from time to time" occurrence. IMO. Many city councils have behind closed door meetings and the ones open to the public are just for show - to appear to be transparent. They listen to concerns from citizens but never act upon them and even eject people from those meetings. The FBI even got involved. Talk about a stacked deck!
This is the result of multiple city councils refusing to do what they agreed to do. absolute case of f around and find out. I live near there and its a mess.
Nah, I don't like that. Burdening the citizens with a loan because politicians fracked up? Nah. Those that signed should instead be held personally responsible with their own property. Might give the company less money, but cultivating holding officials responsible instead of the taxpayer can easily cause officials not to do stupid shit.
@9:25 Yeah, that happens in non governmental institutions as well. I've experienced it. A new plant manager comes in with a "great idea" and is told we've already tried that, it didn't work. Well, we get to prove it won't work again.
If the city has guaranteed future income, how can they declare bankruptcy? Being out of money for the rest of a year, doesn't seem like it should be qualifying.
The amount they could afford to pay the developer would be rather minuscule based on their current budget, it might take them decades to pay this back, assuming they would be allowed to pay it back over that time line.
Well you would have to prove future income and assume nothing's going to happen. There's no downturn in economy and because you have assets, you have to sell those assets unless they come to an agreement for a certain amount every year, but developers probably are like liquidate everything.
If the city wanted to reopen a signed contract you would think that the mayor or city council would have consulted the city attorney, if they have one. If they didn’t have a city attorney then outside council should have been retained. You would think that the city should have had some form of liability insurance to cover the taxpayers against legal mistakes by the city. Unbelievable!
Mosl corporations (and all cities are corporations, that is what it means to be a city) do carry insurance. Just as with our home and auto insurance though, there is a deductible and a limit to liability. It is probable that this city has insurance, but just not enough to pay the full amount of the settlement.
Politicians have been doing this forever. Development in this country is so stifled with ridiculous regulations and hoops to jump through. It's no wonder companies do not want to build facilities here.
Yes, very strict water rights in Washington. Washington says they own all the water and they prohibit saving rain in barrels or any other means. You can have so much rain it's flooding but get put on severe water restrictions because of how the water rights are laid out.
Rightfully so. These developers cut all the corners they can. I worked as a project engineer for a home builder for 7 years. Our profit margins STARTED at 50%. I saw margins on paper of over 150$ for single family homes.
@inthesun3884 Been through the water rights b.s. I live in Texas on 135 acres. I have a spring fed pond, well, and a 60,000 gallon rain catchment system. They tried to tell me I had to dismantle the rain collection. I told them to pound sand and won in court. That system had been in place since my grandfather. I just updated the capacity 25 years ago. I have a very large family and a working ranch. They can't stand it when you are independent of their system.
@TheMostSlyFox I am 💯 for building codes and proper construction methods. I've seen plenty of builders do some real back handed nonsense. I have also experienced government intrusion for no reason. When you are self-sufficient and don't need them, they can't stand not having control over you.
If this man owed the city even a bag of nickels. There would be no leniency. Eastern Washington or Western Washington, makes no difference. The government's incompetence and arrogance is glaring.
Many of these contractors put up terrible homes. They might look nice, but have tons of problems. Not sure where things are going wrong, but you wind up with shoddily built homes that fall apart.
City leaders are big fish in a little pond, but they’re still not above the law. The developer has rights and bills to pay. In this case the city shot themselves in the foot.
I believe this is an example of why we should allocate lands for individual settlements.theres just too many fingers in the pie.too many chefs and not enough cooks.too many profiteers than the folks that just want the chance at a homestead. Thanks Lehto Law.
🤔 It’s satisfying that sometimes one CAN fight city hall. The sad part however is that it is the town’s citizens and not the apparatchiks, who acted in bad faith, are bearing the financial responsibility. 😎
Bankrupt city in Illinois, some years back, lost city hall to a plaintiff who was injured by corrupt cops.
This was eventually overturned, meaning the injured person got NOTHING.
There should definitely be a requirement for municipalities to carry liability insurance.
No insurance company would ever insure them lol
Most corporations (cities are corporations) do carry insurance, but just as you and I have a maximum payout on our home and auto insurance, that won't always pay a 100% of the settlement, and just as with our insurance on cars and houses, we have to pay the deductible and anything over the amount specified in the policy. My guess is this is what happened here. They very likely have insurance, but just not enough.
New Orleans is judgement proof because their state law says it doesn't have to pay judgements.
If they can't pay then the winner should get the town, new mayor in town.
Yes, depends on what liability insurance covers. If someone trips over a broken sidewalk, then yes; public liability insurance would cover that . But malicious behaviour because the council doesn’t like what they’ve signed up to, not so sure about coverage for that…
I live in Wagoner county Oklahoma.----- County Sheriffs arrested a woman. She was a type1 diabetic. They took her insulin away from her and wouldn't give it back to her. She died. Her family won a $13 million judgement against the county......NOW we are having a special election to decide how we want to pay this judgment. Either higher property taxes or a sales tax increase.......This is INFURIATING. We the people did nothing, but we are having to pay for what the deputies did.
The county voted in the trash that resulted in the judgement. There are consequences for voting poorly.
Why aren't you telling us that 3 deputies are awaiting trial for homicide? Taking insulin away from a diabetic is murder.
Wtf that's murder
@@frotoe9289that is part of the problem. There need to be criminal charges enforced. Maybe they will take 15 seconds to think with some common sense!
I looked up the details to this case. Absolutely insane. They basically tortured her to death and the only people being punished are the taxpayers. I don't understand why people take this. There should be daily protests at the DAs home, demanding charges. It's completely insane that, for cops, the punishment for murder is somebody else pays a fine.
Cities always do stuff like this. I remember when I was a kid, the city council agreed to this big development plan for a shopping mall and a bunch of other stuff, and part of that deal required the city to make road improvements because a big development of a shopping mall and apartments etc. requires a lot more road capacity than the two lane roads that were there. The developer started building, and suddenly the city said it wasn’t going to do the road improvements, so they got sued, and the developer won. So we all got to pay for the legal fight on top of the eventual road improvements they should have just done per their agreement.
Smarter municipalities make the developers pay for road improvements.
Think about what kind of people run for office at the town level. They’re not there to do good for the people they represent lol. It’s to benefit themselves. Ego, power, money, control, and excluding other people as they see fit. These are the things that fuel Karen.
@@stevebabiak6997:
They don't, though, at least not for commercial properties. They simply reduce or drop the taxes for that development for a period of time, if the developer _does_ the road improvements themselves.
@@undertow2142 :
Because nobody would want to do anything good for their town. Everyone on any town council can be referred to by your slur. Of course.
@@undertow2142less true of small towns than larger ones. Chicago is worse than most towns with 5k. It is a lot easier to replace councils and mayors because everyone knows them and they are less insulated from criticism.
No town is ever too small to not attract people to rule over it as though they're above the law. Leveraging every bit of power they can for their own desires and gains.
Big fish, little pond.
Ever been to an HOA meeting? Little kingdoms still attract big personalities.
Usually it's the Mayor though.
People and groups of people, large and small, usually do a mix of what are insightful choices and how far they can push the system. This stew of human behavior helps explain why games like poker are often fun and interesting. This story sounds a lot like somebody overplayed their hand.
Like Dolton, IL.
Imagine that, the city needs to follow the contract. Arrogant politicians need to understand what a contract is and what it means when they violate it.
Unfortunately, they CANNOT make good on the contract. The contract includes water and sewer services that the city can’t provide and never could. The city council of the time was told that the contract was not a good deal and they decided to sign it anyway. Now, if they go bankrupt, the developers will never get anything they were promised and the people who are currently on city water and sewer services will lose that.
Not all contracts can be fulfilled. In my town the state and a mass transit corporation wanted to run a train from a depot to the local mall. The state originally got funding from the federal government. So a contract was drawned up where both governments would help pay for it. The federal government then went back to the state said now they couldn't contribute. The state was stuck on the money and told the mass transit that they couldn't pay for all of it. The deal was squashed. They canceled the train idea.
The most annoying part on my end is that they had to rebuild a bridge near my house and it took longer so the train could run under it.
@@richardbeckenbaugh1805 excellent!!!!!
They, the people in charge who sandbagged the project should be personally liable for a significant portion of this.
Ignorance not arrogance at play here. Many of these small town “city councils” play it by ear without consulting proper legal advice. The council had more than ample opportunity to consult legal advice way before it got this far. Reminds us to be careful who we vote for even at this level and to attend council meetings.
If the city was doing this to a big construction company, imagine what they might have been doing to everyone else. 😮
Absolutely. Using their rules and regulations to fleece their constituents.
I'm a residential construction manager and am currently managing a small developmental, in a small town, for a not for profit. This is the most tyrannical municipality I've ever dealt with. I won't get into the details but suffice it to say that the new political apparatchiks are right out of a Kafka novel.
Cle Elum has a long and well deserved reputation
lol the government in Cle Elum is terrible. I can’t even put it into words. Both the county and cities.
Montreal Canada, a developer I know built condos only to have the city demand he remove the top floor after construction was completed because the building was too high. He told them he followed the approved plans in the building permit but was told they were approved by mistake. HE pointed out the building was the same height as several neighboring buildings but was told those were mistakes too. He had to fight them in court to keep the floor.
He ended up selling his other lot rather than go through that again. And then they wonder why we have a housing shortage.
That's WHY we get contracts. Because we don't want everything to change every time there's a new guy in charge!
This is America. A ton of contracts aren't worth the paper they are printed on. Even treaties are traditionally ripped up in this country. Do you historical knowledge on this issue?
The way that an attorney explained it to me, "Contracts are only as good as the paper that they are written on."
This is why Europe doesn't trust America any more. We can't be trusted with an insane fascist throwing every agreement out like a child every 4 years
@@brandexample1776 I've heard it as "verbal contracts aren't worth the paper they are written on." _Actual_ contracts are supposed to be enforceable.
If the Constitution is often overlooked, a contract is as good as toilet paper 🧻
The mayor and council should be held personally liable for everything. They acted against their cities best interests on purpose and illegally
Unfortunatly so many councillors and city officials are wannabees - asperational. People not used to taking responsibility for their own failings. It is why countries accrue vast debts, and the ppl who bribed the population with promises paid for those promises with money borrowed from the future. It is OK if it is a balenced system with good sense prevailing - but unfortunatly democracy punished the one who ensures debts are paid, whilst rewarding those who carper the road with promises and borrowing
Even if a small percentage,.. they would think twice on reneging or playing games.
Probably on the take from the settlement, to embezzle tax payer money from their role… passing their pockets at the expense of the tax payers.
It must be fun to gamble with other people's money.
Ask ANY Congressman!!!
Cities should go bankrupt if they violate the law. "You can't fight a city hall" needs to be a thing of the past. City hall can get sold off at auction after the court rules the city has to pay more than they have. If a government can't function by following the law, then that government needs to cease to exist.
Cities do go bankrupt. It is almost always small cities, but it does happen.
And then what? People still live in that town and still need all the things government does. Giving city hall to some private individual sounds satisfying, but all the thousands of people in the area who weren't involved in the problem still need civilization to function.
The residents should be treated as the chattels of war.
@@GamesFromSpace In most states the county would automatically become responsible for fulfilling the responsibilities of government, but only to their own current standards.
@@P_RO_ That's just kicking the can up the road, what if the county goes bankrupt?
And it still unfairly screws over all the people living there.
I've done a lot of contract work for governments, and another thing about the "new guys coming in" is that the OLD guard, on their way out, often do a bit of light sabotage. Often, the people coming in are from a different party, their opponents etc. So the guys on the way out will only share the bare minimum required, pack up or destroy anything they don't have to turn over, and they aren't going to be available to help the new group, that's for sure. And each group wants their own people. So even people who would stay on, contractors etc, are usually fired so the new group can bring in their own people or contractors. There isn't really any institutional knowledge for these reasons. It's like if you had a company where you fired everyone every few years and started again from scratch, then tried to operate that way without impacting your customers. Basically impossible.
wow ... all those words just to describe "job security"
Welcome to have the US federal government works
Welcome to have the US government works
Yeah. We're seeing this in real time with the Biden admin.
@ My town is traditionally Democrat because of location and external influences, administration and council members are Democrats. The old Democrat mayor retired and the new Republican mayor has had a hard time getting anything done because the bureaucracy is intentionally interfering and sabotaging him
The problem here is resolving it without bankruptcy only works if the city leaders are willing to meet and negotiate in good faith. Its pretty clear that isn't happening anymore.
There needs to be an addendum to their role, which requires that of them…to compromise their personal objectives for the benefit of the contract and the tax payers.
Government officials have gotten way to comfortable just changing rules to suit them. Even the constitution is amendable to them. A contract is basically a napkin agreement to them
Even the Constitution is amenable?
Do you realize that's where the First Amendment, Second Amendment, 4th & 5th Amendment and all of our wonderful rights come from... our constitution being amended...
Not defending this government scum but you seem to be very misinformed on how our rights came to be and how our nation works.
I get your point, and I don't disagree with the sentiment, but the constitution can in fact be amended; we have done so more than 20 times.
@@kritik4lm4ssIt's *_only_* Congress that has that power not "state governments" which many seem to think they have that power (for example, Hawaii's recent state supreme court ruling that SCOTUS and our Constitution are wrong and apparently they know better that pur 2nd amendment doesn't grant the *individual* right to bare arms, only their state national guard 🤡)
What City Attorney was advising the elected council? I truly hate it when one party of a contract thinks it can alter the contract without the consent of the other party or parties. Then leverages some sort of pressure to make the other party do so. (City messing with inspections and plan approvals is but one way, along with the public announcements of disgust for the contract that they entered.) So, put the City out of business, force the council to disband, and make the council members financially responsible for any short falls. That is the proper thing to do.
I have a feeling that a city this small doesn’t have an attorney. They may have someone in town that can consult & didn’t but not one on the payroll because I cannot imagine any attorney would tell them it’s okay for them to do what they did.
@@kenyattaclay7666the city probably figured the little city Magistrate could protect them.
Don't let the voters off the hook that easy - they elect clowns then they can pay for the harm.
From what I have seen, municipality attorneys are there for a check. Their officials make laws that are violations of the US Constitution and the attorney does nothing to stop them . Whats peoples Rights when the attorney could lose his job for doing the right thing.
Well, look at how they have altered the Constitution. Unilaterally time after time with a Supreme Court that doesn't have said power in the Constitution.
A 28 acre lot near me sold in 2020. It's beautiful wooded land with a protected watershed creek running through it and it's probably the last property that big left in the township. A developer bought it and wanted to put 130 single family houses on it. It didn't make it past the public zoning commission meeting.
That doesn't make sense. Are you saying the person bought it before getting the land rezoned? If so, then the developer was stupid. If the town rezoned the land after he had it approved for development, then the people who stopped the developer are in the wrong.
Participating in local government matters. My brother’s neighborhood in MN includes protected wet land at the end of the street, which is any area >5 acres. The land owner has done everything possible to develop it. He set up shell corporations so that the “separate” corporations each owned less than 5 acres. The city wants the land developed so my brother and his wife have been fighting both the land owner and the city. My family has homestead property in ND, and my grandfather fight the Department of Agriculture who back then demanded in return for government subsidies that he drain his wetlands and cut down trees to increase farmable land. He refused and a good portion of the farm is now protected wet land. The beee hives are still there. It one of the few farms that don’t have to rent bees for pollination We rent it out to a cousin as the family has moved to MN and NM.
Is this supposed to be a positive story? I hope you never complained about housing prices.
@@gamesguy When all new construction is pretty much $400,000 plus homes and no one is building 2BD1BA because townships won't allow those to be built like they did years ago, one can complain all they want. Building more McMansions will not bring housing prices down.
@@litigioussociety4249 The developer is fine. The land was probably $millions cheaper when not already zoned for development. When the first round of rezoning request fails, you toss a few thousand dollars to the campaigns that challenge the incumbents and request again from new leaders, stressing how much additional tax revenue the city is missing out on until land improvements increase the taxes on the property. Repeat that for every election for the next 20 years, and if it pays off once you make bank.
I've always heard it as "Clee-el-om"
YES! "klee EL-əm" by pronunciation guides. :)
This, growing up in Washington everybody pronounces it "klee-el-am'. I've never heard it pronounced like in the video.
Agreed. People nearby say it as two separate words.
@@dennispadilla5853 Me neither, and I've been here over 3 decades.
@@dennispadilla5853 How often have you heard Michigan natives living in Michigan pronounce the name of it? It's unsurprising that, growing up in Washington, you heard people pronounce it like locals. It's also unsurprising that people elsewhere might pronounce it differently as they have only the spelling of the word to work from.
What happened to the political leadership of the town in Michigan after the town lost all its appeals? Was anyone ever tried for a crime?
Sent this to my third-born since he works there. He says "I've seen the construction he's talking about too. Cle Elum is apparently SUPER expensive to get housing in, since Suncadia (the resort he works at) jacks up the housing prices. So very few people actually live there; they just drive from Ellensburg (next biggest town), and work in Suncadia. So the town itself makes no money, except for [the three businesses] and the brewery."
Sounds like the people running the town aren't very wise. I know, I know... government folk not being wise? Shocked!
Thanks for sharing your experience.
There's lots of small towns that do things like this and lose out on lots of revenue. Thanks Steve!
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I remember a controversial development approved by our outgoing council that ended up seeing most of the people who approved this development being voted out. The mayor had retired on his own. When the new mayor got elected, he was very clear with people that the deal had been reached and agreed to by the previous council and as much he would have loved to cancel it, he wasn’t about to expose the city to a lawsuit. The developers ended up pulling out when they couldn’t sell enough pre-build units in the condo tower they were planning. Unfortunately, this came after they had already demolished a few buildings, including a couple historical ones. But at least the new council was smart enough not to try and anger the developers.
Yeah my town is seeing that right now. The last council approve a huge amount of development with a thought for supporting infrastructure like road, parks, schools etc. they got voted out by a landslide before actually construction started. Construction starts and people are blaming the new council.
Cle Elum is on the east side of the Cascades but still more west than east. It is a small town, has a huge golf course, close lakes, rivers and mountains. It screams "big money bedroom" community. I am certain the 22 million dollars is easily there, it just isn't collected by the city. Maybe the county or state but good luck. It is a ”big money" protected place. Those people don't want outsiders in their bedroom.
I mean, it's over in the US of A. Surprised they did not just raise the funds with traffic fines and "arresting money." Seems to be a legitimate source of income for US counties.
Should start a Gofund me.
Thankfully WA is a liberal state, made up of public servants who don't believe in that kind of public phuckery. EG. Police checkpoints are considered unconstitutional and therefore illegal.
Thank you, Steve.
Mammoth Lakes, California when through bankruptcy for 20m+ for denying a developer his project that the city agreed to.
Socialists lose eventually.
yea!
ha ha. .. $20M for Mammoth Lakes is pocket change
It was a lot more, I think ended up at $43M or something, including interest. They didn't deny the project, what they did was to work against an FAA approval that was needed, while happily letting the developer pay for airport improvements. I think developers are often scumbags, but what the city did was worse and they deserved to lose that lawsuit. But no, it's not pocket change due to the way the town funding and geographic limits work.
this is what happens when the gov. does NOT FOLLOW THE LAW
ha ha .. WHAT law ?? We will just change it to our benefit ...
Also hi Steve. Love all the cases you bring up
Cle Elum has a population of around 2200 people, so about $10000 per person tax assessment if they tried that. 😮
Imagine living in a town that lets a Karen Screw something up so bad that you get stuck paying off lawsuit.
Steve, please tell us Michiganians what city 1 hour from Detroit that was. I'm curious.
Asbury Park NJ has bankrupted or driven away multiple developers and investors trying to revitalize the city. A new city council would come in and think previous agreements were just suggestions.
Developers are locust they show up looking to suck the life blood out of a city by promising growth and prosperity… if only the city cut them a deal and from the development costs…. And they leave town with they pockets full of cash and cheaply built high price housing in their wake
I've stayed at the Aster Inn in Cle Elum several times while attending the Northern Exposure Moose Fest. It's a really nice small town just a few miles from Roslyn, the town where Northern Exposure was filmed. In the show, Roslynt doubled as Cicely AK. This is a fairly depressed area with limited opportunities and the majority of jobs going to the resorts and large developments in the area. I can see why they wanted to do this but it looks like they bit off more than they could handle. Too bad.
Why don't the corrupt officials ever have to pay?!
Perfectly fine on the city’s eyes. As a builder I would be pissed! Adding pork belly into things almost sounds like the federal government.
The difference is that the government does pay its contracts. The F-35 fighter program is such a case. The prime contractor, Lockheed, dramatically understated the cost of the program (about 1.3 Trillion dollars) and now that program is estimated to cost $2 trillion.. The taxpayers will make Lockheed whole, even though they boinked us in the butthole.
I worked at a hospital back in the east coast. The hospital was over 100 years old and was confined into a small existing space, in a growing town/area. The hospital wanted to build a new building/medical center just on the outside of town, very close to the interstate. It had all the plans in place 10 years leading up to it. 1 year before breaking ground, the political positions changed and the new leadership changed their agreements with the hospital on what was needed to build the new facility. The hospital decided it was better to completely leave the town. They build their new facility a few towns over and closed the old hospital…leaving the first town that screwed them over with more limited care options and NO hospital.
“Special Assessment for tax payers to foot the bill” The lack of accountability for city officials to act like this is just plain wrong. They can completely screw up the situation and the taxpayers pay for it. They’ll likely still get a pension for life or free healthcare. If somehow their livelihood was tied to their poor results, things might change.
Elections have consequences. Not understanding that can be very expensive.
They used to be this ancient Anglo-Saxon legal tradition called lynching.
Should go to a vote, but from politics here, I know it would fail.
@@hughmccurdy3348 no they don’t, the establishment politicians wether Repub or Demons can just play back and forth at taxpayer expense never solving any real problems because they need to keep division.
I was on a church board many years ago that was working through a building project. The church had a term limit in place for board members. The entire board had just finalized the building plans for the project when it was time to rotate out some of the board members. When the new board members came in, one of them decided he didn't like the building plans and torpedoed the entire project, causing them to start over.
We elect people into the city government who don't know basic law and the rights of the people,they make unconstitutional ordinances and the taxpayers have to pay for their mistakes. We live in a time that information is at our fingertips, almost everything we do is recorded and filmed. The city government in to learn to do research and consult the city attorney before they make costly mistakes like this city government has .
Lack of legal knowledge among elected officials is a problem but often there is a huge disparity between the legal resources of a large development venture that will hire a large firm and a municipality which might be using an attorney who is doing double duty as the municipal prosecutor. This can lead to a host of absolute messes for municipalities they aren't able to deal with.
Another variation on this theme, which may have occurred in my small town, is when a developer is in league with the ruling clique controlling the town council. A deal is reached for a development where "in partnership" the city pays for lavish projects (which it cannot really afford) to augment the value of the developer's scheme. These projects are then to be turned over to the effective control of the developer. The ruling clique is duly voted out - but before leaving inks a number of "emergency" measures to give the developer what they wanted anyway. The new city council tries to undo all this with great difficulty (very messy) while the town is saddled with a higher tax rate put in place by the old council to finance all this largesse.
Ben is inspecting the copper cube.
the cu-cube 😂
I live next to this small city. The coolest thing about it is - it still has a Radio Shack!
This is the collateral damage that occurs when the citizenry doesn't hold it's public officials accountable until it's too late! That little town in Oklahoma is having it's real estate taxes severely increased due to a lawsuit
Some people will move away if it's too much to bear.
The people, and I mean everyone, should stand together and say “No, we’re not paying one cent for your incompetence. You work for us, not the other way around “
Leadership responsible should face consequences. Starting with ban all responsible from any public service.
If a bunch of towns and cities were bankrupted by lawsuits for the terrorist actions of cops on their payroll it would send a much needed message. This kind of egregious activity by municipalities is rampant all over the country but what do we expect from a bunch of people seeking power to dominate and subjugate the rest of us "for our own damn good."
I lived in a small village of about 3000 people. Our police chief decided to publicly slander a couple of business owners by claiming they were gun and drug runners with no evidence whatsoever. The chief conveniently retired with his pension intact when it was clear the village was going to lose the lawsuit. He cost us taxpayers a half million. We had a village gov't, a town gov't and a county gov't in our rural county. It's been my experience many of the people (not all) that run for those offices either want to feel important and/or want to exert authority over others. People are starting to wise up about how important it is to be involved with local gov't because in most cases we aren't getting the best or the brightest.
And yet nothing happens to the people responsible for breaking the contract, because by law they were acting in the position of "good faith?"
There comes a point where shame alone just isn't a fitting punishment for people in trusted positions of power that screw everybody else over by making stupid "bad faith" decisions!
Qualified immunity, hide behind it.
Wait, how can the city make the residents pay for its own malpractice? Why are corporations and bureaucracies never the ones punished for their own misdeeds?
Not to mention I have to imagine that assessing big fines to residents would work against the developers interests, since who would want to move somewhere that this has happened in the past and could happen again.
WTF are you on about? The city is nothing more than the representatation of its people. So when a city goes into bankruptcy, it falls upon its member constituents to pay the balance. And WTF does corporations "and bureaucracies" have to do with anything? I think you don't have a clue what you're asking. If you do, you certainly don't know how to express it.
@@chuckschillingvideoswhy should the taxpayers be responsible because their city council is inept while the city council goes on like nothing ever happened?
@@Fater4511 At day's end, there's no one left to pay the bills is there? And the taxpayers are the ones who elect the scumbags who steal, sooooooooooooooo....what is your alternative?
Cle Elum is where Douglas Munro, the Coast Guard's only Medal of Honor recipient, was raised and is buried.
I once spent a night in Cle Elum. It was the longest week I ever had. 😂
There is an interesting concept in UK law that the parliament can't bind future parliaments, that a future parliament can make, remake or unmake any law they want. It sounds like these cities are trying to operating under that principle.
That's basically true anywhere. It's why a contract to build and operate, say, a prison contains a clause that the State must supply a certain number of prisoners; ie that if they change the law to reduce the number of custodial sentences they can't just leave the prison operator high and dry.
Yes, but this is about the incorporated town and contract law…which isn’t under the jurisdiction of the town. Business arrangements in the UK with the government are still subject to contract law or no one would work with them.
@@dwaynepenner2788 I totally understand that, I was just making the observation that it sounds like the towns are trying to operate in this way.
The city should have never signed the contract. They promised things they absolutely could not deliver. Water and sewer service that the city couldn’t provide. The city council of the time had absolutely no idea what they were doing. They were a small town council with dreams of being a big city. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the resources to provide one tenth of what they promised.
Cities are corporations, and just like any other corporation, sometimes you see cases where the board of directors (city council, mayor, city manager, etc) are simply not that smart.
Ben standing up next to the Lawyer Dog & Quebec plate; second shelf, screen left, Steve’s right. Cle Elum is the home & burial place of Douglas Munro, the USCG’s first & only Congressional Medal of Honor awardee during the WW2 Guadalcanal Campaign. Munro had a Coast Guard Cutter named for him.
Ben’s by the copper block near Lawyer Sheltie.
Politicians are very good at making a mess of everything .
Thank you
You see bad government ALL over. I'm in an area where an auto repair company wanted to establish itself, and they were denied after a full YEAR of being yanked around, and WASTING $100k in rent while they were waiting for the town government to make a decision. Then when they FINALLY did make their decision, they said something along the lines of, "we don't want that kind of business in our town". Then that SAME year, a big business auto repair shop came in, and were also denied, but then they asked what would it take to do business in our town, and the government said as a joke, "$1million". The big business auto repair wrote the check, and were permitted to start their business THAT WEEK. I'd bet big money that the 1 million dollars that was, "donated to the town" just so happened to disappear into about 5 pockets....
I HATE small town governments almost more so than big feddy, simply because they have more DIRECT control over people in their immediate vicinity.
The smaller and more redundant the government the more corruptible they are. In the USA, HOA, non-rural sheriff department and School districts should be abolished on those grounds alone.
Oh? What small town was this? Was the property zoned for that use? If so, there is case law that says you can't stop a business from establishing there. If I remember correctly, Steve made a video on that one.
@brianfrolo245 It was about 10 ish years ago maybe a little under, and I can confidently say that the person wronged doesn't care about fighting it anymore and has already moved on. A prolonged legal battle would only bring them hardship at this point. I also don't want to give out potentially doxxing info, so you can choose to believe me or not, it doesn't really matter.
Efit* somehow I missed the part about zoning? But yes, the proprrty was a prior industrial building that was still in the proper zone, and was even near a other currently operating industrial businesses and a full Department of Transportation lot with all their salt piles, gravel, and equipment. So yeah, there were no zoning issues with the property itself, it's just that they, "dIdN't WaNt ThAt KiNd Of BuSiNeSs ThErE aNyMoRe". They even talked about wanting a videogame arcade there instead.... as if those have even been viable since the 90s....
@@brianfrolo245 Recently Edison Motors passed on an old factory they were interested in in Terrace, B.C. because the town would only give them a 3 year temporary permit.
The former truck manufacturing plant was rezoned commercial or something. They wanted something like a coffee shop in a building set up for industrial use, including an overhead crane.
Digging your shirt, Steve!
My dad is a now retired real estate developer on one particular project back in I believe the early 2000s he was building homes primarily for military families near an army base. The only problem was that the division had a firing range pointed at where the homes were supposed to be built. It was negotiated before hand that my dad's company would pay for the army contractors to build a new firing range elsewhere on the base, he did not want to go through the security clearance process to do it themselves. Then the army kept dragging their feet delaying the project for almost a year on not moving the range blocking the entire project since someone could have been shot otherwise. One day my dad had enough of the red tape when someone told him we may need congressional approval to move the range. He decided to bring his accountant who just so happened to be Nancy Pelosi's nephew to a meeting with a two star general, the base commander, and other high level brass. This was when Pelosi sat on the arms appropriation committee in congress. He pulled the general to the side and told him if he didn't hurry up he would be making a call to 'Aunt Nancy' that got the general's attention. The next week he was notified all shooting practice had been discontinued at the existing range, construction was approved for the new range, and he was good to go on starting building the homes. To this day my dad loves telling the story of how he put the fear of god in a general.
Would you say he was in Honor or Dishonor for these actions ?
@@homezmaker6925 Neither of those makes grammatical sense in English.
In this case the biggest problem is the new elected city council thinks they can do what they want without first consulting the city lawyers to find out if they can /should try to change the contract.
When my dad did a 60 acre development in the late 80s & early 90s, the city wouldnt even approve the plat unless he gave them 10 acres of parkland (if i remember correctly). I dont remember him being upset by it as it was just a cost of doing business with that city (& the city didn't get in the way once it was approved)
As long as it is negotiated up front.
Still sounds like extortion like the mafia.
Opposite happened in my Midwest city. Developer gets city to float loans for the development and the developer goes bust leaving the city on the hook.
My city in northern California, about 30 years ago was seeing lots of interest in development and a little had been done. We had a extremely good city manager then ,they said development would impact traffic schools and parks, so all this was tied to the development, the developers threatened a law suit and other cities caved but my city didn't and they got everything they wanted , no there was no city bonds and taxes raised to fund schools etc , and the cities that caved regretted it.
Homes were a little more expensive here, but because of schools and neighborhood parks etc, people wanted to live here
East Cleveland has owed tens of millions for many years now- they just don’t pay them. I don’t know that those judgements will ever be resolved, or how to make them pay.
Mayor Quimby will never retire.
His pay should be threatened.
@@mrcryptozoic817 That's just the income you know about....
My county has 1 city, and until recently, there was 1 continuous mayor. He was in office for 40 years. The longest mayor in office. I think steve did an episode on this. He had a poor reputation outside of the city, but was related in some way to every citizen of the city. During his tenure the county was listed as the fastest growing county in the US. Since he retired, there has been new developments, including muti story apartments. Those were never allowed because it would have brought in voting residents. Forsyth county, City of Cumming, Georgia.
"Klee El'əm." Not "klee elm."
That’s “Fraunkenstein, not Frankenstein”
@@grover10011
I live near Cle Elum. I speak it as a native.
The city should have to sell all their land in order to pay for judgement. Governments have to be made examples of.
This is why there should be educational requirements for people running for office even at the city level. Imagine they had business degrees or degrees that deal with city planning and development.
So the city put in the investment for water & sewer and were not getting anything back.
They money should come from the pockets of the politicians
Sadly, this can't happen. Cities are lawful corporations (this is what it means to be a city, you incorporate). Just with any other corporation, if it gets sued, the leaders don't pay settlements out of their own pockets. Just as with any other corporation, if the corporation can't pay, it declared bankruptcy. The system worked as it should.
IMHO if politicians & gov employees step beyond their delegated authority then they have personal liability. We need to put laws in place to make them accountable for personal actions.
I don't think this should be legal. I think that if a town does something that the residents don't like they should be able to vote them out and reverse things if the people want to. We're supposed to be a government of the people, by the people, for the people. The new town leaders shouldn't be beholden to a contract that the old town leaders entered into if the people of the town voted the old town leaders out because of it.
Sell to Canada
No, cities can't sell themselves to another country
Canada can't afford it either.
Those that bungled the contract should be held countable
top ten t-shirt
A pleasure as always sir! 😇🫡🫡🫡🫡
The Mayor wants to be called, Your Honor, then pay up!
How is there going to be 40% empty space with about 3 houses per acre? Who did they buy this land from and why was there a contract with the city?
Why would a town with barely 2,000 people be getting into this level of development? Of course, with Ferguson coming in as Washington's new King, the developer will probably be tied up in trivial litigation for years.
there are actually alot more people in the surronding area. The town sits at the intersection of two interstates, so there is the whole gas station/fast food strip right off the freeway.
It’s probably a suburb of a larger city.
Those same bureaucrats would have aggressively prosecuted any private entity that did the same thing they did.
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Government is absolute power, therefore it is always going to be corrupt.
If they go bankrupt they should be required to sell assets like parks !!
But parks are often dedicated to the citizens as a public good and only become property of the city incidentally because of how the laws work. They shouldn't be able to liquidate assets that belong to the public to pay their own debts.
That's the kicker. The city doesn't own anything, the public owns it.
This makes it a problem when the government makes long extension contracts that don't actually fully help the public. This is why the government needs to have development attorneys with a mindset of growth and future challenges.
everything! Ya think this will teach the people who live there anything? nah
@@runderwo wait, did you just say the laws work
Parks would not sell well even if one were to agree that the city council owned the public land within its borders instead of just administering it. Nobody would buy a park that people would know can't be developed because good luck getting the zoning on it changed.
I live in Cle Elum and this is HORRIBLE for everyone! All involved are going to lose. The mayor that singed this development agreement was 2 councils ago. As you so well said, the next mayor is where the problem started.
This is the basic flaw in our system of government where the people are fully represented. They are also fully liable, then, for the decisions made on their behalf. I can give you 35 TRILLION examples. And then to watch as those officials get away scot free is just evil.
No, doesn't work that way. A city is a corporation and the people that run the corporation are not personally responsible for paying any lawsuits. It is the same with any other corporation. If they don't adhere to the contract, you get to sue them. If they can't pay, the business goes bankrupt. All cities are corporations. That is what it means to be a city in the US. It means the city has formed a legal corporation.
@@shenmisheshou7002 I understand that that is why we are liable when officials make bad decisions. My point was that seems immoral - for an elected person to be able to make bad decisions that cost others a lot of money while not suffering any consequences. [At the same time somehow also end up making a lot of money themselves.] Of course, there are some laws in place if the elected official really messes up like that lady in Illinois. Tiffany something.
@mikeyh0 That is what people are inclined to say, but this is why open records acts exists, and if taxpayers don't get involved in these major decisions and speak out against them, or find new representation, then this is an expected outcome. Unless you carefully monitor your elected officials, bad is bound to happen from time to time.
@@shenmisheshou7002 Yes, but they shouldn't be making money off their bad decisions. Yet they are - in fact I might postulate that that is what attracts them to "public service" in the first place. So it is not a "from time to time" occurrence. IMO. Many city councils have behind closed door meetings and the ones open to the public are just for show - to appear to be transparent. They listen to concerns from citizens but never act upon them and even eject people from those meetings. The FBI even got involved. Talk about a stacked deck!
whoa .. the "people" are NEVER fully represented ... What alien planet do you live on ??
This is the result of multiple city councils refusing to do what they agreed to do. absolute case of f around and find out. I live near there and its a mess.
city also has a failing sewer system and wants raise rates over 60%.
There's going to be hell to pay for this and heads will roll for this financial screwup.
no
Hell to pay, rolling heads and other horrifying clichés are in store for them!
And if residents try and sell because they don;t want to pay they'll quickly discover their homes are worthless.
Could the changes have to with safety or code changes that affected the entire city and thereby this new development?
Eff em. They can take out a loan.
bonds lol
thenk yew!
Nah, I don't like that. Burdening the citizens with a loan because politicians fracked up? Nah. Those that signed should instead be held personally responsible with their own property. Might give the company less money, but cultivating holding officials responsible instead of the taxpayer can easily cause officials not to do stupid shit.
Ok, boomer
Did you hear the one about the two corrupt parties that enter a contract?
STEVE.... why can't the city officials responsible for this behavior be held personally responsible for - at least - a portion of the judgement.?
it probably falls into the PutinPubliKKKLan category of "immunity" -- committing crimes legally with no consequences
@9:25 Yeah, that happens in non governmental institutions as well. I've experienced it. A new plant manager comes in with a "great idea" and is told we've already tried that, it didn't work. Well, we get to prove it won't work again.
If the city has guaranteed future income, how can they declare bankruptcy? Being out of money for the rest of a year, doesn't seem like it should be qualifying.
The amount they could afford to pay the developer would be rather minuscule based on their current budget, it might take them decades to pay this back, assuming they would be allowed to pay it back over that time line.
Well you would have to prove future income and assume nothing's going to happen. There's no downturn in economy and because you have assets, you have to sell those assets unless they come to an agreement for a certain amount every year, but developers probably are like liquidate everything.
If the city wanted to reopen a signed contract you would think that the mayor or city council would have consulted the city attorney, if they have one. If they didn’t have a city attorney then outside council should have been retained. You would think that the city should have had some form of liability insurance to cover the taxpayers against legal mistakes by the city. Unbelievable!
Mosl corporations (and all cities are corporations, that is what it means to be a city) do carry insurance. Just as with our home and auto insurance though, there is a deductible and a limit to liability. It is probable that this city has insurance, but just not enough to pay the full amount of the settlement.
Govt has no business being in business!
Tell that to Trump.
Good job saying the city name correctly. Doesn't happen often here is Washington
Politicians have been doing this forever. Development in this country is so stifled with ridiculous regulations and hoops to jump through. It's no wonder companies do not want to build facilities here.
Yes, very strict water rights in Washington. Washington says they own all the water and they prohibit saving rain in barrels or any other means. You can have so much rain it's flooding but get put on severe water restrictions because of how the water rights are laid out.
Rightfully so. These developers cut all the corners they can. I worked as a project engineer for a home builder for 7 years. Our profit margins STARTED at 50%. I saw margins on paper of over 150$ for single family homes.
@inthesun3884 Been through the water rights b.s. I live in Texas on 135 acres. I have a spring fed pond, well, and a 60,000 gallon rain catchment system. They tried to tell me I had to dismantle the rain collection. I told them to pound sand and won in court. That system had been in place since my grandfather. I just updated the capacity 25 years ago. I have a very large family and a working ranch. They can't stand it when you are independent of their system.
@TheMostSlyFox I am 💯 for building codes and proper construction methods. I've seen plenty of builders do some real back handed nonsense. I have also experienced government intrusion for no reason. When you are self-sufficient and don't need them, they can't stand not having control over you.
If this man owed the city even a bag of nickels. There would be no leniency. Eastern Washington or Western Washington, makes no difference. The government's incompetence and arrogance is glaring.
Many of these contractors put up terrible homes. They might look nice, but have tons of problems. Not sure where things are going wrong, but you wind up with shoddily built homes that fall apart.
Just because you are awarded a judgment, it doesn't mean you will see a penny.
City leaders are big fish in a little pond, but they’re still not above the law. The developer has rights and bills to pay. In this case the city shot themselves in the foot.
I believe this is an example of why we should allocate lands for individual settlements.theres just too many fingers in the pie.too many chefs and not enough cooks.too many profiteers than the folks that just want the chance at a homestead.
Thanks Lehto Law.
🤔 It’s satisfying that sometimes one CAN fight city hall. The sad part however is that it is the town’s citizens and not the apparatchiks, who acted in bad faith, are bearing the financial responsibility. 😎