From a Concerned Friend and Property Owner
We are only a few days away from a vote that will impact the future of our neighborhood for generations to come.
The agent acting on behalf of the ownership group of the river Club and saveplantation has run a grass roots political campaign that must be admired and at times respected. Over the past 7 years the tentacles of influence that have infiltrated Garden City government, our own HOA and into our own neighborhood and even homes have created an emotional milieu that is destructive to the equanimity that is The Plantation. The chaos that has neighbors and friends pitted against each other was part of a thoughtful and well-designed political strategy that may unfortunately come to fruition in the weeks to come.
What is not to be respected is the actual tactics themselves that have deployed deceit and calumnies that have been allowed to fester and then been used to replace cool logic and thoughtfulness. The Plantation Master Declaration Contract (MDC) is uniquely powerful in the “rights of land” that run in perpetuity with all property inscribed by the metes and bounds description of The Plantation----including the golf course and each individual property that is owned by 252 homeowners.
Our Master Declaration Contract was created by one of Idaho’s greatest attorneys of all time Mr. Dale Higer. He has probably presented at the State Appellate and Supreme Court levels more than anyone else and the same argument can be made about The US Supreme Court.
The Master Declaration Contract that is up for Amendment next week has been reviewed by at least 6 of his colleagues and fellow lawyers in our neighborhood who agree with our position. Statements of previous HOA attorneys and previous HOA Presidents have appeared on this blog supporting that document. As written, it is an ironclad protection against future development of existing golf course open space. It is unique in all of Idaho in the protections it offers. A former neighbor and retired Federal Judge that informed our team of non-lawyers so opined on numerous occasions and offered pleadings before The Garden City Fathers that ware now in the public record.
From the very beginning the agent acting on behalf of the ownership group has made gross misrepresentations of not only his positions, but of his own and his own attorney’s understanding of the document. To review:
He has stated and those representing him that The Master Declaration Contract (MDC) does not apply to the golf course and those who say that it does are “misinformed pesky ankle biters”. If true why the time, effort and money being put up to Amend a Contract “that does not apply and is not operative”? BECAUSE IT DOES APPLY---for now.
If all the parties the HOA, the agent acting on behalf of ownership, and concerned neighbors including interpleaders, and objectors had come together and asked for Summary Declaratory Judgement the whole process would have cost less than $15,000. Our group even offered to pay those legal fees.
All parties included in our group have sworn to the veracity of our understanding of the (MDC). The other side has failed to do so as requested in settlement meetings. Now they admit to its’ existence and seek to amend the portions of the (MDC) that they have for seven years said was not operative.
The genius of the political campaign waged over the past 7 years by The River Club “LLCs”, however many of those there are, is that they have made the choice of saving the golf course unitary. “Only WG can save the golf course”.
We all want to save the golf course in perpetuity, nobody more than those in our group who live on the golf course---or at least until our children and grandchildren can enjoy it the way that we have been able to. By destroying the teeth in the Master Declaration Contract, we give all power over the golf course to Mr. Gustafson, one of his heirs, or if leveraged by a creditor maybe some foreign hedge fund. The faux warning of “only I can save the golf course” comes from the party that has said that the (MDC) is not operative for 7 years. He will not guarantee that future land divisions will not happen on the property. He has made the HOA vote about “saving the golf course”---so say the street captains as they cross our neighborhoods. He can’t promise to save the golf course. He never has and he never will because it would decrease the commercial value of the course that he wants to leverage for his own future developments---parochial and even out of state.
Only neighbors of The Plantation can save the golf course by voting NO on the Amendment that will destroy our own individual and collective right of property” that “runs with the land” forever like a water or a mineral right”. Our own HOA Board has not only failed to value the property covered by the contract----a Givens-Pursley Attorney in Court opined that it is valued by the owner at $300million, but The Board has also failed to present to neighbors the value of the Right itself. Can we all say due diligence? By the way, the $500,000 incentive to the HOA Board to “toe the line with the River Club” is 0.016% the value of the property, and $1.6% the value of the “right of property”.
Only WE THE PEOPLE of the Plantation neighborhood can save the golf course from future corporate outside interests. The only way we can do that is to vote NO on the (MDC) Amendment.
Don’t trust the words of those who have told us for 7 years that the (MDC) didn’t apply----when they all the time knew that it did. We must trust in ourselves to exercise our own individual and collective property rights. Don’t give that right away for nothing.
Vote NO on The Amendment.
Preserve Our Rights of property and our unique ability to determine the future of our own neighborhood.
— John Morrow Livingston