City Council Preview - May 7

Two things stand on in the upcoming city council meeting for May 7 – our law suits and the “strategic plan review”.

The Marla James law suit against the city is a continuation of the medical marijuana dispensary disputes stemming from the City’s decision to ignore state law. The other noteworthy lawsuit is technically called “eminent domain” and it is the enemy of all freedom loving people. The City wanted to own the Rados family’s 13 acres and was unable to negotiate a price that appealed to both parties, so the city condemned the property and took it. Yup – they took it!

Both these lawsuits have something in common, in addition to the $1,000,000 + we spent in legal expenses to an Irvine firm. They both were prompted by the City’s behavior. They didn’t come seeking us, we went after them!

MEDICAL MARIJUANA DISPENSARIES

The medical marijuana dispensary (MMD) case has been discussed at length elsewhere. Suffice it to say, whether you are in favor of marijuana or not, that the State of California passed a law allowing marijuana to be legally dispensed to individuals showing proof of medical need for this drug. The City Council ignored this law and proceeded to drive these stores out of our city, resulting in enormous legal expenses to the city which continues to this day. In its defense, the City claimed that (a) other cities did this too, (b) it was the “right thing” to do, and (c) federal law compelled them to act. Let’s review –

Other cities do it: Is there wisdom in doing what other cities do? Not so long ago we joined several other cities and banned people who committed sex crimes  from going into parks, an ordinance which the city, one year later, withdrew in the face of threatened lawsuits which may happen anyway

A few years ago the city joined other cities in a ban on day laborers, only to have to halt the ban and eventually repeal it. The lesson - Joining other cities in their attempts to shape our lives in not necessarily the smart thing to do.

Do the right thing: Another reason the City used that we’re a “family values” city and MMDs attract the “wrong element”.

It’s hard to write this without smiling. Why? Because the very same officials and city council recently approved opening a gambling den in our city. Apparently gambling dens attract “the right kind” of people while MMDs do not. And it’s hard to take seriously a city that speaks about “family values” when one of our city council members drives drunkenly through our streets in a wantonly reckless manner, and there’s not a single remark from any of the city council members about the propriety of this behavior. What kind of “family values” does that teach? How more wicked is a MMD than a drunken reckless driver or a gambling den? Yet the city claims that its desire to support “family values” was one of the reasons we spent all that money on ridding ourselves of the menace of MMDs.

The feds made me do it: The third reason the city gave for its assault on MMDs was that it was required to do so because of federal law. Of course that’s not true. Federal laws do not require cities to force MMDs out of business. Nor, to my knowledge, has the City been threatened with losing federal funds as a result of allowing MMDs to exist. Indeed, there isn’t a member of the City council who hasn’t, in the past, griped about State and Federal agencies and regulators try to tell us what to do with our lives. Yet suddenly, a city council that routinely asks to be left alone to decide our own fates, uses a decade olds glitch in the federal classification system to ignore State law as well as the wishes of the people, at least if we can judge their wishes by all the people who showed up at the city council meeting asking them to allow the MMDs to remain.

Bottom line – for reasons we may never really know, the City chose to spend hundreds of thousands of dollar forcing MMDs to close down.

EMINENT DOMAIN

The lawsuit against the Rados family and the ultimate seizure of their land by the City was also initiated by the City. It seems that the City spent most of the last decade looking to build a sports park. In all that time, they were unable to find a place where the park could be situated, despite the hundreds and hundreds of acres of city land, developer land, county land, Caltrans land, etc.

Faced with the inability to find the land they wanted, instead of revising their plans or redoubling their efforts, the city chose to plow ahead, with what they considered a key 13 acres missing from the puzzle but with the knowledge that if they couldn’t force the Rados family to sell, the City could use their power to take the Rados property from them.

At this point you should be thinking about the American Revolution and those key terms from the Bill of Rights which guarantee that we will not “… be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation”.

The principle of “eminent domain” has been argued ever since and remains a controversial concept. Most freedom loving people accept the idea that eminent domain can be exercised in a case where the public interest demands it, but in this case, the public interest was clearly not the focus. Poor planning by the city put the Rados family’s land in the city’s bull’s eye, combined with the city’s inability to offer a price acceptable to the Rados’.

SUMMARY

These two lawsuits, currently on the agenda, show a pattern of the city spending millions of dollars on lawsuits which they initiate and which ultimately intrude on our freedom. In one case, contrary to State law and the apparent wishes of the people, the City chose to drive out MMDs, forcing people with legitimate medical needs to travel to other cities. In the other case, the city used its enormous power to forcefully take away the property of a family to compensate for the city’s inability to do a better job planning.

If this isn’t cause enough for concern, these two current lawsuits are not anomalies because in the recent past we can point to other actions by the city which resulted in enormous legal costs, that were similarly restrictive on people’s rights, and that ultimately bore no fruit, except to Irvine lawyers who represent the city.