From The Top of The Hill: Justice On Trial

Author,
Chuck Frank

How many tears must fall before before justice for property owners in Nevada County is served? Once again, the never ending property rights saga continues after a three year battle for Peter Lockyer and Juliet Erickson. They had moved from London to Penn Valley in 2008, hoping to find a peaceful habitation. All they wanted was to build a house, a garage, and an office and then live happily ever after. But while trying to grab a small piece of the American Dream there was a break in the dam, and then came the never ending saga of county regulations and a harassment case beginning with a cell tower issue but also including a Nevada County land grab and an attempted taking of 2/3 of an acre of their land.

Now then, here is the rest of the story. There are roughly 50,000 people looking for justice and residing in Bundyville, I mean Nevada County. Whereas, if we recall, the Bundy land in Nevada was “supposedly” being used as a BLM land grab/mitigation site to “relocate” turtles, while Lockyer and Erickson’s site in Penn Valley had to do with another fabricated but arbitrary claim, and that of being a “visually important ridge line” (VIR) which somehow began to take shape after the couples objection to a cell tower. Surprisingly, this VIR “fact” was not even on the deed but surfaced when the couple decided to begin the process of building and being subject to the county’s requirements. What had appeared to be a walk in the park, sadly became the Super Bowl where the goal posts kept getting placed further back by Nevada County.

At a recent hearing on Friday the 19th of December, Nevada County appealed the case which they lost to Judge Dowling’s earlier ruling favoring Lockyer, and once again the case is still in limbo while the Judge reviews the maze of evidence which could possibly go to a jury trial in 2015.

Instead of settling, the county has set aside a minimum of $100,000.00 of taxpayer money for recent attorney fees while chasing something which anyone would consider to be a matter of outrageous trivia. If the county has this much money to gamble with I would say that it is time for them to start lowering property taxes for everyone in the county.

Ridge line or no ridge line, we are not talking about a National Park here. There is[add]"clearly" no impact. Does the county need to make a study which they never have done in the first place, to shore up their own case? Will they bring down the Hubble telescope and look further into the case? And will a management plan still be required for the protection of those poor Blue Jays and the woodpeckers or also provide a couple of new nesting places for some spotted owls? Lockyer’s lawyer, Allen Haley, dramatically stated that he had never seen anything like this in his entire life or during the course of his own law practice. But what has truly been behind all of the ruckus? It is untruths, and smoke and mirrors.

As the story unwinds, it begins with the Community Development Agency’s regular hard nose tactics in the planning department. Coming from the public record and former e-mails that had been gathered for the case, what is clearly revealed finally is outright retaliation coming from more than one source in CDA. For starters, while making a reference to Lockyer’s land in an e-mail within CDA, one of the major planners has been quoted as suggesting “to turn up the heat a little on neighbors for cutting down the trees and now exposing this ridge line.” If that wasn’t enough, another county administrator who at one time was part of the club responded to that e-mail which read in part, “BTW, we may need to require a Management Plan and Visual Analysis ... " What's good for the goose So an arbitrary request would be added to Lockyer’s permit process.

This behind the scenes drama offers a good look at Nevada County’s brazenness and how they use retaliation towards persons such as Lockyer and Erickson, but only because the couple had complained that a new cell tower which was to be constructed was too close to their property line.

Juliet Erickson is a native Californian and is President of the Friendship Club, a local nonprofit that helps girls at risk. Peter Lockyer formerly was on the board of the Briar Patch.