On Saturday, January 18, attorney Joyce Caraway received a notice from the California Supreme Court that COMET’s Petition for Review was denied. COMET had petitioned for a reversal of the appellate court’s decision in favor of Redlands and taking away COMET’s “standing,” [Ed.’s Note: right to bring a lawsuit]. “COMET had sought to prevent further forced annexations, but Redlands originally argued that COMET couldn’t prevail at trial and the judge bought the argument.” It was all downhill from there,” she added. It appears the case is over, even though the trial court judge did not rule on several issues, such as Redlands’ ‘development impact fees’ for library, police, fire, parks, etc., that Mentone’s developers and subsequent owners probably will not use,” she continued.
“It was a summary denial, meaning that the Supreme Court didn’t have to explain why it was denying review,” stated Caraway, who has been prosecuting COMET’s lawsuit against Redlands and LAFCO for nearly six years. “Redlands may be out of the lawsuit; all that would remain is for LAFCO, which approves Redlands’ forced annexations, to get out of it, as well.
“It has been a very complicated case, with several issues, including Redlands’ having done several illegal annexations and getting away with them.
“This doesn’t necessarily mean the end of the road for Mentone,” she added. “Every such annexation has to be approved by LAFCO, and if the property owners do not wish to be in Redlands, they may object before LAFCO, which has to abide by their wishes: Government Code Section 57078. Thus, if new property developers in Mentone want to stay in Mentone and don’t want to be absorbed into Redlands, they may appear before LAFCO and object and, by law, LAFCO may not approve the forced annexation. The problem is that most property developers think that “agreeing” to Redlands’ demand is all that they can do and apparently no one is telling them otherwise. That’s one reason why so much of Mentone has been lost in the past few years,” she continued. If anyone knows of someone who is developing property in Mentone, they should talk to them and ask them to stay in Mentone by objecting to LAFCO’s approval of Redlands’ forced annexation. If LAFCO then makes the wrong decision, the developer can sue; the decisions in COMET’s case do not prohibit any developer from suing LAFCO,” she added.
“The other problem for Mentone is that, unfortunately, some developers have not cared about it but instead have agreed with annexation or an unenforceable ‘pre’-annexation for business reasons, and thus have placed Mentone’s future in jeopardy. COMET filed suit to prevent future such annexations; also unfortunately, the courts did not discern Mentone’s dilemma and give us what we believed we deserved,” she concluded. MM
Thank you for fighting for Mentone and its citizen Mentonites. How can we get the word out to developers and individuals trying to get something new built on Mentone/SB Co. land? I was not aware you could disagree to LAFCo and Redlands pre-annexation agreement. How do we know what parcels are in the queue for development. Maybe we can get to the owners at an early point in the process so we can explain to them the benefits of fighting back. Again, thank you for all your effort. Wasn’t Pete Aguilar on the LAFCo board at one time? He voted to keep illegal immigrant rapists and sexual assault perps in the USA.