INC NEWS - Drought puts a hold on water, sewer decision (N&O)

[RW Pickle]

This may just be the tip of the iceberg for a number of legal actions to
follow if developers moving forward under one set of assumptions are
forced to stop the development process because there is a new set of
assumptions. The article said it would cost them $45K/mo for delays. And
that's realistic considering the interest paid on the land and development
costs leading to development. And those funds are  recoverable in court if
proved to be not of the developers doing. It could cause them to even go
out of business (I don't know the developer or how deep his pockets are,
so these are things that could happen as these asumptions change to any
developer). A similar incident happened to us (back in the 80's) when
Durham County said one thing, then the next time around, it was a whole
new ball game. We settled out of court for a very large sum of money and
the development moved forward. It's hard to stop development if it's legal
(unless you buy it and choose not to develop it yourself; but that is rare
because of costs).

Development is pretty much defined by law. And just because someone
doesn't like something that's going on, doesn't mean it's not legal. It's
the loopholes that keep getting mentioned that must be closed if
governments/communities/citizens are going to have any say so in
development. Otherwise it is written in stone and no court in the land
will support otherwise. You can only mess with someone's livlng so much.

The old adage "time is money" also applies to development because  delays
(not caused by God) do have a cost. And like I mentioned, are recoverable
in court. Who pays for that? We do in this case. All of government is
funded by us. So we end up fighting ourselves and paying for it. It
becomes us against them, but we're paying to watch the show.

RWP
27 Beverly