BEWARE THE RANCHERO RACKETEERS ……. DIRT DEALIN GONE WILD ……. http://www.bing.com/search?q=land+speculation+swindles++trillions+looted+&qs=HS&pq=land+speculation&sk=HS1&sc=8-16&sp=2&cvid=28DAA54B4AD545F4B4D8B7BF371F439E&FORM=QBLH
Frauds and Quackery Affecting the Older Citizen – U.S. Senate Special …
http://www.aging.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/publications/1161963.pdf
United States Senate
“Beware the Ranchero Racketeer,” by Paul Friggins, in the Reader’s. Digest … “I Dreamed I Retired on My 5-Acre Rancho,” by Norma Lee Brown- ing, in the …
TRILLIONS LOOTED THAT’S The REALITY
AND FOR THE RECORD
https://theadirondacksconspiracy.wordpress.com/the-vanishing-of-trillions-american-style-down-the-rabbit-hole/
TRILLIONS UP IN SMOKE …… DIRT DEALING Cintonista Style
ALL Perpetrated By The Government Itself
judson witham | 30 Jan 05:34 2007
Plat Dedications FRAUDULENT SUBDIVISIONS & Clinton N Associates
zombie toxic subdivisions
QUAWPAW TITLE, Examine the Title Dedications PLAT AFFIDAVITS on their BULLSHIT Land Cons, oh yeah Ken Starr is an CROOKED ASS JERK !!!
Zombie Failed Toxic Subprime Land Swindles and Bank Frauds …
Apr 27, 2015 · Graveyards of the Housing Bust By Mike Colpitts They are littered from coast to coast and do not discriminate. Zombie subdivisions and housing developments
[CTRL] [2] The Great Texas Bank Job – The Mail Archive
Jun 16, 2000 – Greetings from Conroe, Texas “The Bank Fraud – Obstruction of Justice- … Housto n Chronicle, the former Houston Post, the Dallas Morning News, … Check the Houston Chronicle, The dirty part is where the Money Trail Goes. … Judson Witham and many hundreds of other fine Americans across America …
NOTE: Dick Morris was on Rush’s show the day after he was Fired by Billary and Hill. Betty Curry was updated on the MASSIVE Land Cons in Texas and well WOOSH POP BANG the Arkansas Crime Wave disappeared !
The “RED FLAG SUBDIVISION KING” says
We Did Have SEX with the Banks and The S&Ls
(TIME, April 13) — Remember Whitewater? Hacking through that thorny bramble of failed land deals and shady bank loans was supposed to be Ken Starr’s big mission.
WHERE Oh WHERE IS THAT
$ 500 BILLION $
Missing From TEXAS !!!!!
The U.S. Land Fraud Crisis
Scarred by the Savings and Loan Crisis of the late 1980’s and get rich quick artists, greed is abundant in America’s real estate markets. Real estate prices in some of America’s strongest markets have seen land prices increase as much as 300 to 400 percent and even higher in many places in the last three years. Now nearly frozen, the Nation’s land market is slowly starting to show its ugly head. A major U.S. Land Fraud Crisis has resulted, which has the potential to cost hundreds of thousands of investors millions of dollars in losses, if not more.
California probes title insurance kickback scheme
Insurance commissioner subpoenas suspected companies
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
Federal lending guidelines strictly prohibit lending on a pie ce of property less than one year before its last sale on property, which is federally insured. The majority of mortgages are federally insured. The practice of selling land before the one-year period became common. A massive land frenzy resulted. Flipping land as quickly as possible to the next buyer under the one year limit triggered the end of a nearly run away land sales market.
At least one of the causes of the crisis appears to be a hole in the lending system itself. Many lenders make loans on property without even checking to see when the property was last sold.
A sampling of real estate land recordings in 5 Sunbelt states shows land closings over the past two years to be up an average of more than 200% with recorded prices increasing at more than an estimated 40% to 60% on average per closed transaction.
It is reminiscent of the old pyramid scheme selling the land from one buyer to another until fortune finally evades the last owner. In many cases the last buyer to make the purchase is left “holding the bag.” But in this case the bag isn’t full of money at all. In fact, that mystical bag may be leaking dollar bills out with every day that goes by and many owners don’t even realize what is happening yet.
Robert L. Vickers, 58, partner of WB Etheridge, Thomas Eikel, WG Horne III and Donald Clesson the “Pinewood Village gang” was sentenced to five years in prison on Oct. 12, 1988, in Arizona for money laundering and conducting an illegal enterprise.
Spitzer opens title insurance probe
New York Attorney General, insurance dept. investigate possible kickbacksThursday, March 02, 2006
By Janis Mara
Inman News
America’s investors have short term memories and want “instant satisfaction” on investments. Some are becoming slowly aware of the fact they might be victims of either their own greed or lenders who prey on unknowledgeable buyers. Most of the fraud appears to have occurred in the Nation’s Sunbelt states, where growth is abundant.
The looming onslaught of foreclosures in markets from California to Florida and many places in between, coupled with many builders refusal to buy property due to over inflated prices has slowed building. New building starts are down.
The National Association of Realtors® use to say that only 3% of all land buyers made a profit on land purchases. Although reliable statistics aren’t yet available on how much that percentage has changed, when the majority of real estate speculators get wind of how they can make a fortune on any investment it’s usually a sign that the markets will deflate.
Land prices in many parts of America, fear lenders and economists a like, are going to come crashing down. The U.S. land fraud crisis has the potential to be a multi-billion dollar problem with tens of thousands of investors on the losing end.
Typically regulators of federally insured mortgages only investigate mortgages in the case of a foreclosure, but with the crash of land in some markets lenders are wondering whether legal investigations will occur sooner rather than later.
The over abundance of real estate speculators in land is sure to trigger foreclosures. “Something has to happen,” said Florida builder Tate Watson. “I wonder how big it will be or should I say how bad it will play out in the markets.”
The extent to which greed and fraud has occurred in land transactions cannot possibly be known this early i n the investigatory process. How much of an effect it will play out in the market place is also nearly impossible to tell, according to several real estate economists.
One old-time real estate investor says the fraud has been so rampant it reminds him of 1989 when real estate markets came to a tumbling halt. “You can feel it,” said California investor Tom Taylor. “It’s just like 1989 all over again
The Great Texas Bank Job is REALITY
Gee you say The land Registration/Securities Act of 1931 ?
You mean Land Deeds Are Securities for Bank Loans
OH CRAP what about the THOUSANDS OF ILLEGAL TEXAS SUBDIVISIONS
“V” asks
WHERE Oh WHERE IS THAT
$ 500 BILLION $
Missing From TEXAS !!!!!
The Ghosts Of “EAGLE TITLE CO.” of CONROE TEXAS
Regulators Probing Title Insurance Kickbacks
Wednesday, March 02, 2005 – By Andrew Countryman and William Sluis –
Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO, (KRT) – State regulators across the country are conducting a widening investigation into what they call a kickback scheme under which developers and lenders steer title insurance business to certain companies.
However, most investors say this is a different sort of fraud, perpetuated by investor’s greed, some lenders willingness to make questionable loans and the Fed’s drastic raising of interest rates to the highest level in five years. The Federal Reserve Board controls the nation’s vital lending rates, effecting mortgages and loans of all types in an attempt to control the nation’s economy.
If history is any sort of guide post, the prices of land increased to staggering levels in many real estate markets effected by the fraud caused by the Savings and Loan Crisis, and it took years for land prices to come down to a level where investors would buy land up in mass again. But the Savings and Loan crisis scenario of the late 1980’s was caused by the deregulation of Savings and Loans.
The complexion of the U.S. Land Fraud Crisis will take many months, if not years to fully unravel and play out in the market place, according to economists, many of whom feel it will not have the large scale impact of the Savings and Loan Crisis. Most contend privately however, that it will have at least significant effects on th e nation’s economy. Congress could be called upon once again to bail out the banks.
Many economists are hesitant to talk about the situation publicly, fearing that markets could react in mass. Most interviewed for this report chose to stay off the record publicly, instead choosing the path of least resistance. However, a few did estimate the crisis will cost hundreds of thousands of land owners and investors many millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars. They also estimate it will cost banks and other lenders fortunes.
“A whole lot of people are going to get hurt,” said one economist. “We know that much. Just how many people it will effect is hard to tell.”
Many investors have made fortunes in the U.S. Land Fraud Crisis, which will soon turn into a public scandal. Some say it’s because of the capitalistic market place running its natural course, a sort of disturbing view with a perception of how greed eventually destroys all business markets one at a time.
judson witham <jurisnot <at> yahoo.com> wrote:
Don Bolle’s is SPINNING In His Grave
http://www.apfn.net/MESSAGEBOARD/09-29-05/discussion.cgi.48.html
You Say 500 Billion from Looted Banks and S&Ls, Land Flips, Straw Borrowers and NON RECOURSE LOANS to TOP GOP and DNC Operatives
http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/oldfashionedlandscamsgohightech
FBI History 1908 – The Bureau of Investigation was created by Theodore Roosevelt to investigate corrupt public land scheme in Idaho.
V>
The Internet is reviving a grand old American tradition: land scams. Thousands of lots in phantom subdivisions that were sold decades ago to people who hoped to build retirement homes in warm states are reappearing on online sites such as the Internet giant eBay.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/oldfashionedlandscamsgohightech
Clinton and Bush ADMIT
“Old-fashioned land scams go high-tech ”
The TEXAS PROJECT ( Probing TRMPAC )
“God Father Jack Abramoff Says”
Arizona Arkansas Texas Whats The Difference Gambling Ships, Indian Tribe Money LaunderingS&L – Bank Lootings and land Fraud IT ALL PAYS FOR CAMPAIGNS & HO’s RIGHT
The Great Texas Bank Job is REALITY
As Arkansas AG , I Became Guvnah and Then
El Presidente & Paid For Campaigns With LOOT from S&Ls and Funny Little Land Deals
Click to access WillcoxMurder.pdf
Here’s a primer on the subject
Click to access CochiseRecreationFraud.pdf
TEXAS HAS THOUSANDS OF WHITEWATERS?CASTLE GRANDES just ash US Department Of HUD and the FBI
How does the scam work?
http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl <at> listserv.aol.com/msg24399.html
A hastily formed land company purchases a huge chunk
of wilderness, maybe 10,000 acres for $100 an acre. Next step is the bulldozing of crude dirt roads and the plotting of the land into lots. The 10,000 acres become 40,000 quarter-acre lots. Then, through fancy advertising and lots of slick blueprints, those 40,000 lots are sold nationwide for $1,000 a lot. That’s a $40 million return on a $1 million investment. By the time sales commissions have been paid, engineering and planning costs met,and the heavy advertising budget absorbed, the actual profit is closer to $20million.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
(TIME, April 13) — Remember Whitewater? Hacking through that thorny bramble of failed land deals and shady bank loans was supposed to be Ken Starr’s big mission. Bu t since January, it has often seemed that the independent counsel, in his zeal to prove the President tried to cover up extramarital sex, had forgotten all about Arkansas. Now Starr appears ready to close up shop in Little Rock. And there’s no sign that his effort–which will have consumed four years and as much as $50 million when all is said and done–will result in any charges being filed against Bill or Hillary Clinton.
Tucker’s first day of secret testimony, March 18, was devoted to a six-hour tour of the Clintons’ real estate history. Starr apparently hoped he would provide more details about Hillary’s role in a house-of-cards residential development called Castle Grande, which Jim McDougal financed through his savings-and-loan, Madison Guaranty. Federal regulators called Castle Grande a sham. After earning $2 million in commissions and fees for McDougal’s associates, it collapsed in 1989 (cost to taxpayers: $4 million), helping trigger the $50 million failure of Madison. In sworn statements to federal regulators, Hillary said she recalled doing little or no work for Castle Grande. In 1988 Castle Grande records were destroyed in what Hillary and her Rose law colleagues later called a housekeeping effort. In 1996 her billing records for the deal, which Starr had sought for two years, turned up in the White House residence; they showed that Hillary had billed at least 30 hours of work on Castle Grande. Her lawyer said that she had known the project by another name and that she was not involved in any fraud.
Arizona Arkansas Texas Whats The Difference ?????????
Why is the Arizona Republic bringing up the Don Bolles issue when they would like the issues ignored
Ernest Hancock
Website: http://www.ernesthancock.com
Why would dozens of Investigative Reporters and Editors come to Arizona to report on our corruption and the death of a reporter of the Arizona Republic? Why would the Arizona Republic not run the reports from a 5 month investigation while the rest of the country was focused on the stories? Why would the Re public all of a sudden bring the issue up and begin a spin campaign?
We’ll be sharing the answers to these questions and a lot more during the 2006 election cycle. But the following timeline might help.
The political machine responsible for the largest share of political corruption in Arizona never went away and many of the same names and families are still in power. The long term plan for John McCain’s run for President of the United States, the 2008 election cycle, the 30th Anniversary of Don Bolles death, the National Convention of The Investigative Reporters and Editors here in Phoenix in 2007 and the opening of a Washington, D.C. Museum to journalism that will have an entire wing devoted to The Arizona Project and Don Bolles all have an influence on the story being told and the Arizona Republic’s role over the years.
Here’s some of the stories from just today and some radio archives that w ill help you understand why the Arizona Republic’s sphincter is so tight.
Ernie
===
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/viewpoints/articles/0528vasquez0528.html
Long before it was published, the project was getting a lot of attention in Arizona. Although many Arizona residents and businesses welcomed the team of investigative reporters from other states, others resented the incursion by outsiders and worried that the dirty laundry the team was sure to dredge up would hurt tourism and business.
“Politicians didn’t like the idea of outsiders coming in to snoop through their underwear drawers,” Cady said.
Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, a national figure at the tim e, was one of those who spoke out against the project at the time.
Goldwater was widely quoted as saying that out-of-state journalists should stay home and “clean up their own towns” and that they didn’t know anything about the stories they were writing.
When it came time to publish the series, the project was dealt a blow when The Arizona Republic decided at the last minute not to publish it.
The Arizona Project turns 30 in 2007, an occasion IRE will mark by holding its annual conference in Phoenix in honor of Bolles.
Bolles worked out of the Capitol pressroom
http://www.azcentral.com/specials/special01/
http://www.azcentral.com/specials/special01/articles/0528Bolles-Intro28.html
Bolles worked out of the Capitol pressroom. He was one of the newspaper’s top investigative reporters. He had reported on land fraud, Mafia members infiltrating Arizona and corruption in various public agencies.
Radio series on The Arizona Project
http://www.ernesthancock.com/archive/index.cgi?actionfiltered=search&search=ArizonaProject
Wednesday, March 3, 2004
Dary Matera and Ernest talk about various stories, including a young girl at 17 that got her first kick in the s tomach by the IRS.
The Arizona Project is discribed and will get discussed on the show starting March 15th. The history of Arizona politics and the corruption that continues through today.
This was a very entertaining and informative show. Dary wrote a book “What’s in it for me” in the early 90’s that picked up where the “Arizona Project” left off and I’ll take it from Dary’s era and update you all as to where we are now.
http://www.ire.org/history/ is where you should look for the history of the “Investigative Reporters and Editors” organization and how they exposed Arizona to the world and why the Arizona Republic newspaper wouldn’t print a word of it.
Guest: Dary Matera
Subject: Arizona Project, What’s In It For Me, Political Corruption ONG>
===
Monday, March 15, 2004
The Arizona Project by Michael F. Wendland and What’s in it for me by Dary Matera. These two books chronical the political corruption in Arizona from as far back as the 50’s.
What is so interesting is that the same people that were known to be crooks a decade ago are still in public service doing the same things.
Our current governor Janet Napolitano was the criminal defense attorney for one of the Az Scam legislators. I guess defending crooked politicians is a job requirement to be apointed as a US Attorney during the Clinton administration. Janet was later elected Attorney General of Arizona and is now our Governor and just got back less than a week ago from a meeting to examine a possible draft to become the VP running mate for John Kerry’s run for US President as a democrat against President Bush.
It’s in this world of politics that libertarians are considered the abnormal people…. is that a compliment? 🙂
Guest: Dary Matera
Subject: Arizona Project, Whats In It For Me, Political Corruption, Janet Napolitano
V>
Hapa1234 <at> aol.com wrote:
Aloha from Hawaii Judson: Good show counselor! You fogot to include the Denver Connection in Colorado {Norm Brownstein, Leanord Millman, Larry Mizel, Ken Goode, Michael Walters, Neil Bush, Gale Norton, aka, the Rock Mountain High – Siverado Gang, and the AIPAC links into Washington DC, via, the Texas Cowboys……Tom Delay, Karen Huges, and the Florida mob with Jeb Bush, Jack Abramoff, Karl Rove, and Bush 41. The other slippery Hawaiian mongooses: AIPAC associates….Ben Ginsberg, David Feith, Grover Norquest, Linda Lingle, Jann Wenner {Rolling Stone Magazine Publisher} and Sim Wenner {Simlac Baby Formula Fortunes}……also ck out: {WENNER’S WORLD on the net} and a list of others…. .
If Witham was such a NUT, why in the Hell Did EVERY Texas Bank and S&L Collapse Again ??????
Houston Post Head:
LANDOWNERS FACE LONG, HARD BATTLE FOR ROAD REPAIRS
VICTIMS OF ‘SHYSTERS’ Date:
SUN, 3/30/1986
WILLIAM PACK, Post Reporter Post photos by Jerry Click
Dreams of paradise have been shattered for scores of Montgomery County landowners who face a seemingly never-ending struggle to obtain various public services.
“You really feel like you’re being abused,” said Tommy Gage.
Gage moved to a southwest Montgomery County subdivision four years ago only to find the roads there so bad that school buses were not allowed on them.
Vicki Burleigh, who lives at a mobile home subdivision in the southeast part of the county, said many residents have moved out because of poor roads, bad drainage, troublesome septic tank systems and uncaring neighbors who litter their property with junk.
“My husband doesn’t want to leave,” Burleigh said. “We had to clear the land and put in a lot of work out here. But I’d almost rather take a loss and start over somewhere else than get this place paid for in a few years and be living in a slum.”
Donna Meek, one of Burleigh’s neighbors in Pinewood Village, said her family’s move five years ago was part of a dream to get “farther out and have some room to breathe.”
“We love it out here,” Meek said. “We don’t want to move, but we may be forced to.”
Landowners with similar problems voice their complaints at almost every meeting of the Montgomery County Commissioners Court.
“We all pay county taxes and yet the county won’t do anything to keep the roads from tearing up my truck,” Gage contended.
But it appears the county’s attitude is changing.
Officials say the problems many of the landowners describe are the result of unscrupulous developers who never recorded plans for their subdivisions with the county.
“They would buy up some acreage, mark off a road, grade it and put a little gravel on it and say the county will take care of it,” said Precinct 1 Commissioner Oliver Hance. County Judge Jimmie C. Edwards III described such developers as “shysters who came in, did the deal, m ade some money and hooked it.”
By failing to have the development recorded, developers avoided requirements in effect since 1967 that stipulate, among other things, how roads should be built, what type of drainage studies should be done and when septic tanks are allowed.
Officials contend they have no authority to make improvements in unrecorded subdivisions where county building specifications have been ignored. They also concede there are more than 600 such subdivisions in the county.
“Can you believe that number?” asked the county’s new health director, Dr. Sydney Garrett.
He said drainage, sewage and septic tank problems can generate health hazards that should be addressed in any proposed remedy.
The focus of the county’s initial response will be poor roads, since officials said that is the problem most often identified by landowners.
Gage and other landowners said the roads have deteriorated despite their efforts to maintain them.
“My brother and I had a tractor and we tried to keep the roads up as best we could until times got hard and we had to sell the tractor,” said Johnny Thibodeaux, who lives in an unrecorded subdivision north of Splendora. “But grading the road doesn’t take care of the holes or clean out the ditches.”
If the roads are bad enough, buses, postal officials and at times garbage haulers will not come down them, landowners said.
“We’re on our fourth garbage hauler,” said Burleigh. “I assume they quit coming because of the roads . . . I imagine one of the reasons family doesn’t come visit anymore is because the roads are so bad.” Hance said landowners are perplexed when they learn the county can’t improve their substandard roads, noting that commissioners often have yielded to political pressure and provided such improvements.
“Commissioners did that in the past when the county h ad 40,000 people,” observed Precinct 2 Commissioner Carol Shelton. “But now, the county has grown so much and funding is so limited, you don’t see it anymore.”
Shelton said commissioners do not have enough money to keep existing county roads in proper shape. Adding improvement and maintenance costs on roads from unrecorded subdivisions would “penalize the rest of the citizens for the benefit of these few taxpayers,” Shelton said.
Others contend the county simply does not have enough money to improve all of the roads in unrecorded subdivisions, now estimated to cover some 450 miles.
Edwards said he is most interested in finding those developers “who misled their investors” by telling them roads and other facilities would be upgraded.
He contended the worst violations occurred in the 1960s and 1970s when the area economy was robust and land was cheap.
W.B. Etheridge, a real estate attorney in Conroe who has developed small subdivisions, said some landowners were victimized during those years by high- pressure salespeople who “made promises but never followed up on them.”
“That should never happen,” Etheridge said.
He and other developers contended, however, that in recent years, subdivision regulations have been honored.
It is primarily moderate-income families that were victimized by developers who never recorded their subdivisions, officials reported. They say solutions will take a long time to accomplish.
Cite As 698 S.W.2d 178
“Inadequately Developed Issues” The Understatement Of The Millenia
Du ROI urged that its rights had been violated, arguing tha t it had been singled out for unfair treatment. We think these issues were not adequately developed. They may be important as equitable defenses since the county sought equitable relief. The doctrine of balancing the equities and the doctrine of clean hands may become relevant. There was more than a scintilla of evidence to show that the father of a county-wide elected official was alleged to have developed an unrecorded subdivision as well as the husband of the secretary of the elected official. Further, reviewing the whole posture of the case, we perceive that the City of Conroe was a proper party to the litigation and may well have been a necessary party. R.V. King may be a necessary party also.
An order had been entered in this appeal concerning the problem of overburdening this record. That order was improvidently granted. It is set aside. We have examined the entire record.
See The Conroe Courier “Red Flags List Reads
“Like Who’s Who In Montgomery County ” LUCY PROCTOR
Note :The case Below Is But A DROP IN THE BUCKET involved in the Land Fraud, Financial Fraud and PUBLIC CORRUPTION associated with the Land Fraud and Banking and S&L DEBACLES in TEXAS
698 S.W.2d 178
Court of Appeals of Texas, Beaumont. La COUR Du ROI, INC., Appellant and Cross-Appellee,
v.
MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Texas, Appellee and Cross-Appellant.
No. 09 84 288 CV.
Aug. 29, 1985.
Rehearing Denied Sept. 18, 1985.
County brought action against developer of subdivision seeking injunctive relief and damages based on developer’s failure to comply with statutes, rules and regulations pertaining to subdivision development in the county, and developer pleaded for declaratory judgment and for relief. The 2nd and 9th District Court, Montgomery County, Bert H. Tunks, J., entered judgment that the county take nothing and that the developer take nothing as to any of its claims, and both parties appealed. The Court of Appeals, Brookshire, J., held that county and city had concurrent jurisdiction in supervision of subdivision of land outside corporate limits of city but within five-mile radius thereof.
Reversed and remanded.
West Headnotes
[1] KeyCite Notes
414 Zoning and Planning
414V Construction, Operation and Effect
414V(A) In General
414k236 Application to Persons or Places
414k236.1 k. In General. Most Cited Cases
(Formerly 414k236)
County had power to regulate developer in its acti vities and actions concerning subdivision of land, even though city annexed a one-foot wide strip of land, as subdivision was more than five miles outside of the regular, ordinary limits of the city. Vernon’s Ann.Texas Civ.St. arts. 974a, 6626a.
[2] KeyCite Notes
414 Zoning and Planning
414V Construction, Operation and Effect
414V(A) In General
414k236 Application to Persons or Places
414k236.1 k. In General. Most Cited Cases
(Formerly 414k236)
County and city had concurrent jurisdiction in supervision of subdivisions of land outside corporate limits of city but within five-mile radius thereof. Vernon’s Ann.Texas Civ.St. arts. 9 74a, 6626a.
[3] KeyCite Notes
361 Statutes
361VI Construction and Operation
361VI(A) General Rules of Construction
361k212 Presumptions to Aid Construction
361k212.6 k. Words Used. Most Cited Cases
There is presumption that legislature’s choice of words in statute is important and each and every word has significant meaning and purpose.
[4] KeyCite Notes
64 Bridges
64II Regulation and Use for Travel
64k29 k. Power to Control and Regulate. Most Cited Cases
200 Highways KeyCite Notes
200IX Regulation and Use for Travel
200IX(B) Use of Highway and Law of the Road
200k165 k. Power to Control and Regulate. Most Cited Cases
Commissioners court had ample authority and full power to do all things necessary to bring about and fully accomplish the objectives of grant of power to control and regulate roads and bridges in their county. Vernon’s Ann.Texas Const. Art. 5, § 18; Vernon’s Ann.Texas Civ.St. art. 2351.
[5] KeyCite Notes
414 Zoning and Planning
414XI Enforcement of Regulations
414XI(A) In General
414k762 k. Defenses to Enforcement. Most Cited Cases
Developer of subdivision, against whom county sought relief for failure of compliance with requirements pertaining to subdivision development in the county, was estopped equitably from arguing and urging that city had exclusive jurisdiction in five-mile extraterritorial zone, as developer did not at any time approach city or any of its officers or governing bodies concerning approval by the city of developer’s subdivision.
[6] KeyCite Notes
102 Costs
102VIII Attorney Fees
102k194.24 Particular Actions or Proceedings
102k194.40 k. Declaratory Judgment. Most Cited Cases
(Formerly 102k173(1))
Trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying attorney fees to developer under the Uniform Declaratory Judgments Act [Vernon’s Ann.Texas Civ.St. art. 2524-1] in action brought against developer by county seeking injunctive relief and damages based on developer’s alleged failure to comply with statutes, rules and regulations pertaining to subdivision development and in which developer pleaded for declaratory judgment that those statutes, rules and regulations were void, as trial court found it unnecessary to render any declaratory judgment respecting validity of statutes in controversy, and trial court found that it would not be equitable or just to award attorney’s fees. Vernon’s Ann.Texas Civ.St. art. 2524-1, § 10.
*179
(Cite as: 698 S.W.2d 178, *179)
C. Charles Dippel, Houston, for appellant.
Randall W. Morse, Houston, Steve Bickerstaff, Austin, for appellee.
OPINION
BROOKSHIRE, Justice.
Montgomery County (hereafter “County”) was plaintiff and cross-defendant in the trial court. La COUR Du ROI, INC., (hereafte r “Du ROI”) was defendant and cross-plaintiff below. County sought temporary and permanent injunctive relief and damages based on Du ROI’s failure to comply with statutes, rules and regulations pertaining to subdivision development in the County. Du ROI pleaded for a declaratory*180
(Cite as: 698 S.W.2d 178, *180)
judgment that those statutes, rules and regulations were void and unenforceable. Du ROI also pleaded for relief declaring the nature and extent of the County’s power, rights and jurisdiction concerning the subdivision, “The Wilderness”, as well as the rights and obligations of the parties under the statutes, rules and regulations concerning subdivisions. Du ROI additionally counterclaimed for damages under the Civil Rights Statute, 42 U.S.C.A. Sec. 1983 (West 1981), and for reasonable attorney’s fees in part under TEX.REV.CIV.STAT.ANN. art. 2524-1 (Vernon 1965 and Vernon Supp.1985), popularly known as the Unif orm Declaratory Judgments Act. Alternatively, Du ROI pleaded that the County had no power to regulate subdivisions within 5 miles of an incorporated city. In brief, County complained of Du ROI’s development of “The Wilderness”, an unrecorded subdivision of land. County contended that the counterclaim below involved solely the controversy between it and Du ROI regarding “The Wilderness”, attempting to defeat recovery of attorney’s fees under the Declaratory Judgments Act. Judgment was rendered that the County take nothing and that Du ROI take nothing as to any of its claims, including attorney’s fees. Both parties appealed.
Contentions on Voir Dire
To the venire panel the County announced its theory of the case. It contended that R.V. King’s corporation, La COUR Du ROI, INC., had sold subdivided tracts in Montgomery County to purchasers. King and his corporation had laid out roads either for public use or for the use of the owners in the subdivision, failing to make a proper plat or map of the same. County also contended that King had not obtained acknowledgements to the plat. He failed to file the plat. He failed to record the plat. The reason for these failures was that King had not met the requirements to make the plat recordable. He did not approach the Commissioners Court with his plans or plat.
The County said that those requirements were that he, King, provide adequate right-of-way for the roads; that he provide an adequate street cut; that he properly build the roads; adequate drainage should be provided. King had failed to give the Commissioners Court a bond to secure the performance by the subdivider. The County additionally contended that, if the subdivider had approached and communicated with the Commissioners Court, the plat would have been refused. The County ( THE STATE OF TEXAS ) maintained that he should have come to the Commissioners Court, complied with County’s rules and regulations, obtained approval and filed the plat before selling the parcels of land.
The trial attorney for Du ROI stated that the corporation was R.V. King’s and that King owned its stock. The defendant’s attorney stated that there were 500 unrecorded subdivisions in Montgomery County and that people who lived in some of these unrecorded subdivisions wanted better roads and maintenance. Du ROI’s attorney said that King’s name was on the list of about 36 or 37 people who had put on unrecorded subdivisions. He said the County did not want to accept the subdivision plat; yet, it wanted the roads improved at the developer’s expense.
The defense further contended that the County, for the first time in 1983-being about 7 years after inception of the subdivision-sent a letter to King saying that his corporation (as to “The Wilderness” subdivision) did not meet the county standards on roads and that King had not prepared a recordable subdivision plat. The defense also contended that the county wanted King and his corporation to file a subdivision plat with the Commissioners Court and improve the roads according to the 1980 subdivision rules, standards and regulations. The defense pointed out that the 1980 rules and regulations were adopted by the County after the subdivision was platted in 1976. Most of the tracts were sold by the end of 1978. The County also wanted a bond to insure performance.
It was explained that the corporation had a lawsuit against the County under the civil rights statutes. Basically, it was contended*181
(Cite as: 698 S.W.2d 178, *181)
that the County had no authority to make the demands that it was making in this litigation and that the corporation should recover attorney’s fees, plus a money award from the jury for violation of civil rights.
Du ROI purchased 1,140 acres of land from King. This acreage is located on and adjacent to the Egypt-Honea Road, a county road for many years. There was an oilfield road located on the tract. Several smaller roads were put in. From 1976 to 1978, the subdivision sold about 135 to 140 parcels. The defense lawyer conceded that King was in the business of subdividing land and that is what the corporation did. At the time of the trial King or his corporation still had about 40 of the original parcels of land. In each case, someone had contracted with Du ROI or King to purchase the title.
Some of “The Wilderness” subdivision was in the Lake Creek area. When Lake Creek rose some of the property was submerged and for sale signs appeared in substantial numbers. Voir dire was concluded.
Narrative of Background
The first witness was Robert V. King. He was, at the time of the trial, President of La COUR Du ROI, INC., a Texas corporation. He stated that it was a solvent corporation. King was also the President of Northlands, Inc., which was claimed to be the same as Du ROI. King owned all the shares in La COUR Du ROI, INC. He ran Du ROI. He could not remember the names of the vice-president or the secretary-treasurer. They did nothing, having no duties.
In November, 1974, Du ROI obtained title to a tract of land containing 1,140 acres. King stated the corporation divided that property into parcels to be sold to the public and that the development had been referred to as “The Wilderness” subdivision. He said nearly all the property was sold in 1977 or 1978. He testified that “The Wilderness” subdivision had roads but that they were not laid out for public use. He did collect a road maintenance fee for some years. It amounted to $2.50 per month per acre in the beginning. It was raised to $3.50. Later the maintenance of the roads was turned over to a Civic Club. At first road maintenance fees were sent either to King or the corporation. King admitted Du ROI laid out the roads for the purpose of the subdivision and that these roads were for the use of the lot owners in “The Wilderness”. King affirmed that. He also said the roads had been used by the Superior Oil Company and Hill Oil Company. King testified that the purchasers owned the roads. Du ROI had sold the property to each lot owner to the center line of the road. “The Wilderness” subdivision was for sale to the general public. He had a plat prepared of the subdivision to show to prospective purchasers, but only a few saw it.
County’s Exhibit No. 30 was introduced into evidence. It is a map showing the subdivision of the 1,140 acre tract, being certified to by Michael Case, a registered public surveyor, on January 12, 1976. The certificate is:
“I hereby certify that this is a true representation of a subdivision of the above tract as surveyed on the ground by me. All corners are shown both natural and artifical [sic] are as found or set by me at this date.”
Lake Creek was shown on County’s 30, as was the Egypt Road, being blacktopped. The map of the subdivision shows “Valley Wood Acres” adjacent to the north. King conceded that the Egypt-Honea Road was a public road and Du ROI subdivided land into lots straddling th at road. King examined a deed from Du ROI to James R. Vancourt which read in part:
“Tract One Hundred-Four (104) of the Robert V. King, a [sic] unrecorded subdivision of 1140.54 acres of land in THE ARCHIBALD HODGE Survey, A-18 of Montgomery County, Texas and more particularly described by metes and bounds as follows:” (Emphasis added)
Tract 104 was deep in the interior of the subdivision. Referring to certain covenants or restrictions on 104, he read:
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“12. ··· This land and the public road in front of this land shall be kept free of litter or trash.” (Emphasis added)
King said that he did not know if it was a public road or not and did not know if it had been a public road prior to the time he purchased the land. He maintained that it was a prior existing road that touched on two sides of Tract 104. King testified that the road had probably been in existence for 20, 30 or 40 years. His attorney had a picture that showed a gate across the road with a “Keep Out” sign. King conceded that he had laid out one or two roads for the use of the purchasers.
He further conceded that there existed between 130 and 145 legal instruments, involving either deeds or contracts for deeds, and that a good number of them were on file in the County Clerk’s office and that each contained the public road language or designation. County’s Exhibit 30, however, had not been filed or recorded in the County Clerk’s office and he had not sought in any manner to obtain the approval of the Commissioners Court prior to, or subsequent to, the sale of any of the tracts. He admitted that he had not made himself known to the Commissioners Court or to the County Clerk.
The subdivision was not used for residential purposes before 1975. After it was sold, however, the subdivision was restricted to residential use. Nor had King approached the government of the City of Conroe about the approval of the subdivision. King admitted that he did not have 32 feet of street cut or compacted subgrade on all the roads. King said some of the subdivision was in the flood plain. He also testified that the roads did deteriorate a good deal in wet weather especially if heavy trucks used them.
King testified that he did seek a permit from the Montgomery County Health Department. After the department examined the acreage, it determined that it was permissible to use septic tanks. Building permits were issued allowing septic tanks.
There are no street lights in the subdivision. King further testified that he did not intend to further plat the subdivision more than that already done, nor did he have any intention of further improving the roads nor of putting in drainage structures or improvements. He did not intend to tender a bond for performance. He had no intention of entering into any written contract with Montgomery County and a court order would be required to make him do so.
King changed the name for La COUR Du ROI, INC., to Northlands, Inc., by filing a name change with the County Clerk in Harris County. King thought that the land was within 5 miles of the City of Conroe and that, therefore, it was subject to the city’s jurisdiction. He said he never went to the city to have his map or plat approved by the city.
The Roads
King estimated about 18,000 linear feet of roads exist in “The Wilderness” that need to be maintained. The County c ontended that it would cost $15.00 per linear foot to construct these roads, thereby showing that it would cost $270,000 to properly complete those roads, but that only $405 a month was being collected for maintenance. King said he was willing to help on the maintenance through the Civic Club but that he was not willing to pay any money to the County to rebuild roads. He said he would not be willing to pay money to condemn the rights-of-way if the roads were private and classified as such.
One Foot Strip Annexation
The ordinance concerning the Conroe annexation along F.M. 1488 was called a spoke or strip annexation, having been passed in 1966. A large portion of that annexation was deannexed in March, 1976. King agreed he was still making contracts for deeds in 1977 and he had some repossessions in 1981 and 1982. At trial time he still had a number of deeds to make out; that is, the actual conveyances of the property, for the corporation.
The County Engineer
James D. Blanton, the County Engineer and Flood Plan Administrator for Montgomery*183
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County testified. He was a professional engineer. The engineer proved up Exhibit 24 as the County’s 1980 regulations for subdivisions, drafted in the engineer’s office. Blanton testified that the County and his department were concerned with getting the subdivisions recorded so that they would know where the subdivisions we re within the county, especially with respect to the flood plain. Where the lot lines lie was important. The County was interested in the type of drainage work and construction that were done within the subdivisions. Another major concern was the road construction itself. The concern was that the roads should be constructed according to County’s standards so that the County would not have to spend the taxpayers’ money on subpar roads. The Engineer’s Office inspects the roads and the plat. These inspections are made in person by members of the engineering department.
The County’s Rules and Regulations
The 1967 rules required a 60′ right-of-way, with the surfaced, traveled roadway of 20′. Beneath the traveled portion were required 4 inches of compacted base. Each shoulder was required to be 6′ wide; the 20′ traveled part was to be a paved surface. These requirements were necessary because Montgomery County had an average of 53 inches of rain each year and the surfacing was required to keep the moisture out of the base materials so that the road would not deteriorate.
Blanton explained the 1980 requirements. The 60′ right-of-way and the shoulders remained the same in 1980 as they were in 1967. Another requirement was that the amount of the bond was changed from the $3.00 per linear foot in 1967 to $15.00 per linear foot in 1980. The 1980 regulations were based on public hearings and the experience of road failure with resulting potholes. Blanton testified that King had never come to the Engineer’s Office to offer this subdivision plat nor to offer a drainage plan for approval.
Flood Plain and Floodway
Blanton further testified that about 56% of the 1,140 acres of the subdivision was in the 100 year flood plain and that 30% a ctually lies within the floodway. He testified that the flood plain by definition is the area where a flood can be expected once every 100 years, or 1 chance in a 100 each year. The actual history of Montgomery County shows that it has experienced 100 year floods as frequently as three times in a given year. In layman’s language, the floodway is the area containing the swiftest and the most dangerous water within the flood plain. Usually the boundaries of floodways are on either side of a creek or a river. In the flood plain a person can obtain a type B building permit which requires a permittee to elevate the slab about the 100 year flood plain. But in the floodway, itself, the County will not issue a building permit of any kind for permanent structures.
Blanton had personally inspected the subdivision known as “The Wilderness”. He testified that some of the roads were basically impassable and that they did not meet the 1967 rules and standards of the county. He tes tified that most of the subgrade was not 32′ wide, meaning a 20′ roadway or travel way with 6′ shoulders. He said most of the roads in the subdivision appeared not to have had any base at all. Most of the bridge structures did not have railings and appeared to be inadequate in size to take care of the drainage. He further testified there was no hard surface on the roads that he was able to find during his inspection. Some of the roads were too narrow and would quickly deteriorate under use by heavy trucks. Some of the roads were too narrow for two opposing vehicles to pass. One road had but one lane. He testified that it would cost about $20.00 to $25.00 per linear foot to construct a road to county specifications. Later he said $12.00 to $15.00 per linear foot might be an overall average. Some of the roads needed both base and surface and would require widening and ditches.
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He said the 18,000 linear feet of roadway in the subdivision, at $15.00 per linear foot, would cost $270,000. But he testified there was probably more like 23,000 linear feet rather than 18,000 linear feet of roadways. The engineer estimated that 23,000 feet of roadway (60 feet wide) would amount to more than 30 acres of right-of-way. This acreage would cost about $3,000 per acre, totaling an additional $90,000. $90,000 would be needed for condemnation purposes as well as $270,000 to construct the roads to comply with the 1967 standards.
The en gineer testified that Montgomery County’s rules and regulations were less stringent than those of the City of Conroe in 1967. The engineer testified that most of the subdividers or developers cooperated with the county voluntarily but that Mr. King had not voluntarily cooperated in any way to bring “The Wilderness” subdivision up to standard. Blanton said King had never brought any subdivision plat into the County Engineer’s office.
Purchaser Vancourt
James Vancourt, 39, lived on Windmill Lane in “The Wilderness” subdivision. He purchased his lot in November, 1976, and paid an average of $2,850 an acre. He bought six acres; he had been paying a road maintenance fee. He understood King was to maintain the roads. He testified that King promised him an all weather road. He had talked to King personally on several occasions. Vancourt was on the road maintenance fund committee of the homeowners association. From his observation, the combination of heavy trucks and a good rain devastated the roads. He testified that there were between 3 1/2 and 4 miles of roads in “The Wilderness” subdivision, but only 1 mile was usable by school buses and mail carriers. He testified that there were 6 permanent homes in the subdivision.
Vancourt conceded that there was a sign on the road coming into the addition declaring it a private drive. When Vancourt bought his first tract, he was shown a plat. Vancourt expected access to his lot in all seasons. He did not expect that during a heavy rain his property would become unreachable. He testified the roads in 1976 and 1978 were maintained by King. Vancourt testified that he helped in handling the maintenance monies. He said these monies were not adequate to improve the roads, with about $1,900 that was on hand. He swore the maintenance fees were not adequate to maintain the roads in their present condition.
Purchaser Larry ThompsonENTER>
Larry Thompson is 48 and lives on Possum Hollow Road in “The Wilderness”. He purchased tract No. 72. He received two tax bills one year. He went to the tax office and found a change in his tract number. This occurred about three years after he bought tract 72. Later No. 116 was assigned to his tract. Both numbers applied to the same tract. He actually received two different tax bills. He bought a little over 5 acres and paid $3,200 an acre. He maintained that there was nothing in his contract about a road maintenance fee.
At the time Thompson bought his land there was no road to his tract. He had to walk to it. He asked the land agent how he was going to get to this property. The land agent showed him a plat showing a road easement to his land. The easement was going to be cleared for the Thompsons, resulting in an actual road to his tract. But until the day of the trial there was no road where the land agent had promised. Thompson said he was driving on the dirt. He claimed, on the day he testified, that there were puddles of water standing “clear across the road and it’s eight to ten inches deep.” He testified that the land agent said: “Well there’ll be a road big enough that you can get in and out year around with your car.” Thompson testified that several months after his purchase King called saying that he wanted to talk with Thompson. King explained that Thompson was driving in on a pipeline easement. King wanted to change that. King wanted to take a certain corner off the property and add a foot on the side. Thompson replied he had already registered his contract with the county and he *185
(Cite as: 698 S.W.2d 178, *185)
refused King’s request. He then questioned King about the need for the requested easement, especially a 60′ easement. He asked King: “Why do we need it?” Thompson sworn that King said: “Because the county says we have to have a sixty foot road easement when you’re in a subdivision.” (Emphasis added) Thompson maintained that there was no road to his property. He claimed that his tract number was changed from the original tract number on his lot and the road easement had been moved from where it was shown on the plat he received when buying his tract. Thompson maintained that King had afforded him only an easement which was placed on the top of a pipeline. He used it to drive into his property but he said it was not a road, stating: “It’s where the pipeline cuts trees down.” Thompson possessed a plat the sales man gave him at the time of his purchase. This plat was marked County’s 26.
The Foot Wide Strip Annexation
[1] Du ROI argues that “The Wilderness” lies within 5 miles of Conroe’s limits. Hence, the County has no jurisdiction over it. Conroe annexed a foot wide strip of land along F.M. 1488. It appears the city did not and could not extend the usual utilities and municipal services as far along F.M. 1488 to a point approximately south of “The Wilderness”. A major purpose of TEX.REV.CIV.STAT.ANN. art. 974a (Vernon 1963) is to cause plats of subdivisions near or adjacent to cities to conf orm “to the general plan of said city” and its streets, parks, utility facilities, etc., with regard, inter alia, for extension of sewer, water mains and public utilities. Other important purposes of art. 974a simply vitiate and negate 1 foot strip annexations as being a basis for exclusive jurisdiction of the cities within a 5 mile radius. Conroe repealed most of this strip annexation in March, 1976. The repeal ordinance declared in relevant part:
“Section 1.: The Council finds that the strips of land hereinafter described are not suitable or necessary for City purposes, are uninhabited, and do not contain any property subject to taxation by the City.”
The City “de tached” all of the one foot wide strips along the north side of F.M. 1488, annexed by Ordinance 303, situated westerly of the west line of the Henry Proseus Survey. We are unwilling to hold the 1 foot strip annexation when considered with art. 974a -and its purposes-defeats the County’s jurisdiction in the 5 mile zone. “The Wilderness” is more than 5 miles outside of the regular, ordinary limits of Conroe. We perceive after the March, 1976, deannexation the remaining 1 foot strip was more than 5 miles from “The Wilderness” Many of the sales were after March, 1976. We hold the 5 mile zone rule does not apply to 1 foot strip annexations.
Article 6626a
The trial judge ruled that the statutes, county rules, and regulations were valid and constitutional but that before September 1, 1983, Montgomery County had no jurisdiction to regulate Du ROI in its activities and actions concerning “The Wilderness” subdivision and denied any injunctive relief. The County forcefully asserts this is error. We agree. We sustain the County’s Point of Error One and hold that the trial court’s ruling is reversible error. The trial judge also denied attorney’s fees to Du ROI.
Du ROI appeale d from the denial of declaratory judgment relief and from the refusal to grant attorney’s fees. The County appealed the judgment denying its power to regulate Du ROI before September 1, 1983. The Attorney General of Texas appeared and participated to defend the constitutionality of TEX.REV.CIV.STAT.ANN. art. 6626a (Vernon 1969).
[2] Article 6626aONG>, as amended by the Acts of 1961, effective June 17, 1961, is a logical threshold statute. Article 6626a, as originally enacted in 1957, vested definite powers in the commissioners court concerning construction of streets or roads in subdivisions outside of corporate limits. The commissioners were also empowered to require adequate drainage in accordance with standard engineering practice as well as a *186
(Cite as: 698 S.W.2d 178, *186)
bond for performance. The 1957 enactment of art. 6626a provided that Home Rule cities could regulate and restrict subdivisions within a 5 mile radius of their corporate limits. But in that same statute the legislature also found that the re were no adequate laws giving supervision to subdivisions outside the corporate limits of a city.FN1 We hold that it was the legislative intent and, indeed, the legislative mandate that concurrent jurisdiction was granted to the counties and the cities in the supervision of subdivisions outside the corporate limits but within a 5 mile radius thereof.
FN1. Act of June 6, 1957 (55th Legislature), Ch. 436, sec. 7, 1957 Tex.Gen.Laws 1303.
The 1961 amendment to art. 6626a, in relevant part, simply provides that the Act, as amended, “does not limit the requirement of prior approvals of plats by cities”.FN2 We hold that a prior approval also contemplates a subsequent approval. The subsequent approval would necessarily be by the counties. Hence, the only logical, sound, deducible conclusion is that the counties must also have concurrent jurisdiction of subdivisions outside of ci ties. We so hold. This holding applies to art. 6626a as it existed in 1957 and after it was amended in 1961.
FN2. Act of June 17, 1961 (57th Legislature), Ch. 449, sec. 2, 1961 Tex.Gen.Laws 1023.
Article 6626a with the 1961 amendment dictates, in mandatory commandments, every owner of land who divides land in two or more parts in any subdivision outside the corporate limits, shall cause a plat to be made which shall accurately describe all of the said subdivision in detail. Further, such plat shall be duly acknowledged by the owners or some agent and shall be filed for record and be recorded in the office of the Count y Clerk. A bond shall be made conditioned that the owners will construct the roads according to County’s specifications. The commissioners court shall have the authority to refuse approval of substandard plats. The provisions of this article (art. 6626a) shall control and be effective (in case of conflict with other laws). These repetitive, mandatory, obligatory, affirmative, and dutiful “ shall ” provisions set out in Sections 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 of art. 6626a , we find, clearly express the legislative intent. They empower the commissioners court with concurrent, mutual jurisd iction involving subdivisions outside city limits but within the 5 mile zone. We are compelled to this holding especially where, as here, the City had not acted, nor had been approached. Neither King nor Du ROI approached the City. Neither King nor Du ROI obtained the City’s approval of “The Wilderness”. King unequivocally admitted the same.
Article 6626a, as amended in 1961, and art. 974a, as amended in 1975 and 1981, are harmonious, compatible and complimentary when properly construed. They permit and, indeed, require that counties have concurrent jurisdiction with the cities concerning subdivisions outside the city limits but within the 5 mile zone. There is nothing in the language of either statute which indicates a legislative intent to create exclusive jurisdiction in the cities concerning subdivisions outside of their boundaries but within a 5 mile radius thereof. Article 974a addresses the needs of cities. Article 6626a addresses the needs of counties.
Rules of Statutory Construction
The paramount rule for statutory construction is set out clearly in Eddins-Walcher Butane Company v. Calvert, 156 Tex. 587, 298 S.W.2d 93 (1957), where the holding and rule was announced in the following language:
“Every word of a statute is presumed to have been used for a purpose, and a cardinal rule of statutory construction requires that each sentence, clause, phrase and word be given effect if reasonably possible···· This rule is not altered by the fact that the Legislature has not defined a particular word or phrase, and in the absence of such a definition the words of the enactment will usually be given their ordinary meaning····”
Generally laws relating to the same subject should be construed as though they were *187
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incorporated in the same act. If these laws can be harmonized and effect given to each such law or article when so construed then there is no repeal by implication. Repeals by implication are not favored. We deem the proper construction of these statutes, arts. 974a, 6626a, and 662 6, is to harmonize them and give effect to each when it is reasonable to do so. We find it reasonable. Gordon v. Lake, 163 Tex. 392, 356 S.W.2d 138 (1962); see also Conley v. Daughters of the Republic, 106 Tex. 80, 156 S.W. 197, 157 S.W. 937 (1913). We quote from Conley, supra, 156 S.W. at page 201:
“··· hence, if repealed, it must be by implication, which is not favored. The two laws relate to the same subject, and should be considered as if incorporated into one act. If being so considered the two can be harmonized and effect given to each, there can be no repeal. Neill v. Keese, 5 Tex. 23, 51 Am.Dec. 746. ‘There [sic] statutes, being in pari materia, and relating to the same subject, are to be taken together and so construed, in reference to each other, as that[,] if practicable, effect may be given to the entire provisions of each. * * * Thus considered, there is no repugnancy between the provisions of these statutes. They may stand together, and effect may be given to the entire provisions of each. And thus to construe and give effect to them, is in accordance with the established rule of construction.’ Brown v. Chancellor, 61 Tex. 438 [sic].”
There is a separate opinion on the motion for rehearing in Conley v. Daughters of the Republic reported at 157 S.W. at page 937, and from the second opinion we quote:
“It is the duty of this court to so construe the laws that both can stand, if fairly susceptible of such construction.”
Our reasoning, we maintain, is harmonious with the reasoning in Trawalter v. Schaeffer, 142 Tex. 521, 179 S.W.2d 765 (1944). We have adhered to these rules of statutory construction in construing art. 974a, art. 6626 and art. 6626a and hold that under this record the Commissioners Court of Montgomery County was not divested of concurrent jurisdiction over “The Wilderness”. This holding is correct because art. 6626a was enacted in 1957 and amended in 1961; whereas, the last amendment to art. 6626 was enacted in 1951.
[3] To construe these statutes otherwise would allow the undesirable results that have taken place in this case; namely, the replatting of parts of a subdivision, the renumbering of tracts in the subdivision without the consent of the owner and the rendering of duplicate ad valorem tax statements on the same tract of land for the same year. None of these could have been the intention of the Legislature. We cannot ignore the well-established presumption that when construing a statute the Legislature’s choice of words is important and each and every word has significant meaning and purpose. See Riverside Nat. Bank v. Lewis, 603 S.W.2d 169 (Tex.1980). See also Jessen Associates, Inc. v. Bullock, 531 S.W.2d 593 (Tex.1975).
Constitutional Grant of Power
TEX. CONST. art. V, sec. 18, in relevant part, provides:
“The County Commissioners so chosen, with the County Judge as presiding officer, shall compose the County Commissioners Court, which shall exercise such powers and jurisdiction over all county business, as is conferred by this Constitution and the laws of the State, or as may be hereafter prescribed.”
Following that constitutional grant of power the Legislature enacted TEX.REV.CIV.STAT.ANN. art. 2351 (Vernon 1971) which provides, in relevant part:
“Each commissioners court shall:
····
“6. Exercise general control over all roads, highways, ferries and bridges in their counties.” (Emphasis added)
[4] No subdivider could thwart the constitutional grant of power or the consistent legislative intention to repose into the commissioners court the duties and authority to control and regulate the roads and bridges in their respective counties. In *188
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construing TEX. CONST. art. V, sec. 18 with art. 2351, we hold that they conveyed to the commissioners court ample authority and full power to do all things necessary to bring about and fully accomplish the objectives of the grant of power. See Terrell v. Sparks, 104 Tex. 191, 135 S.W. 519 (1911). See also West v. Ellis County, 241 S.W.2d 344 (Tex.Civ.App.-Waco 1951, no writ). We find this clear holding in Terrell v. Sparks, supra, 135 S.W. at 521:
“··· For the rule of construction by which we are to be governed, we copy from Sutherland on Statutory Construction, sec. 341, as follows: ‘Whenever a power is given by statute, everything necessary to make it effectual or requisite to attain the end is implied. It is a well-established principle that statutes containing grants of power are to be construed so as to include the authority to do all things necessary to accomplish the object of the grant. The grant of an express power carries with it by necessary implication every other power necessary and proper to the execution of the power expressly granted. Where the law commands anything to be done, it authorizes the performance of whatever may be necessary for executing its commands.’ ”
Attorney Generals’ Opinions
Although we have carefully considered and weighed all of the attorney generals’ opinions that were submitted to us, we find them in conflict. They are certainly not harmonious. In view of this, there is added impetus on us to construe the relevant statutes anew and afresh. This we have done.
Equitable Estoppel
[5] Since it is admitted by King, both for himself and his corporation, Du ROI, that he did not at any time approach the City of Conroe or any of its officers or governing bodies concerning the approval by the City of his subdivision, “The Wilderness”, and since, therefore, the City of Conroe never acted, nor was ever asked to act, nor was ever approached about the plat of the subdivision known as “The Wilderness”; therefore, we hold that R.V. King and his corporation are estopped equitably from arguing and urging that the City of Conroe had exclusive jurisdiction in the 5 mile extra-territorial zone.
Du ROI’s Attorney’s Fees
[6] The trial judge committed no error when he refused attorney’s fees to La COUR Du ROI, INC. We think his action was correct in the first instance because he did not award La COUR Du ROI, INC., a judgment based on the Uniform Declaratory Judgments Act. Nevertheless, TEX.REV.CIV.STAT.ANN. art. 2524-1 (Vernon 1965 and Vernon Supp.1985) certainly reposes in the trial judge broad discretion in the matter of attorney’s fees. TEX.REV.CIV.STAT.ANN. art. 2524-1, sec. 10 (Vernon Supp.1985) provides as follows:
“In any proceeding under this Act [Declaratory Judgments Act] the Court may make such award of costs and reasonable and necessary attorney’s fees as may seem equitable and just.” (Emphasis added)
The trial judge’s judgment or final decree states, in relevant part:
“The Court further concluded that it is unnecessary to render any declaratory judgment respecting the validity of any of the statutes in controversy and that it would not be equitable or just to award attorney’s fees to Defendant. ···” (Emphasis added)
The statute requires the fees to be equitable and just in the mind of the trial court. Under this unusual record, the trial judge had ample reason and discretion to find that the awarding of attorney’s fees would not be equitable. Since injunctive relief was involved, the proceeding below was in equity. Under our blended system of law and equity, the court could and doubtlessly did apply the doctrines, either singularly or collectively, of clean hands, balancing the equities and other well-known and well-established cardinal principles of the equity practice. Under this entire record the trial judge, sitting as a chancellor in equity as the keeper of the *189
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sovereign’s conscience, could and did properly deny Du ROI’s attorney’s fees . This same reasoning and rationale would apply as to whether the awarding of attorney’s fees would be just. The trial judge, well within his prerogative and discretion, decided that it would not seem equitable and just. We affirm the trial court’s action in denying the award of attorney’s fees to Du ROI.
Inadequately Developed Issues
Du ROI urged that its rights had been violated, arguing that it had been singled out for unfair treatment. We think these issues were not adequately developed. They may be important as equitable defenses since the county sought equitable relief. The doctrine of balancing the equities and the doctrine of clean hands may become relevant. There was more than a scintilla of evidence to show that the father of a county-wide elected official was alleged t o have developed an unrecorded subdivision as well as the husband of the secretary of the elected official. Further, reviewing the whole posture of the case, we perceive that the City of Conroe was a proper party to the litigation and may well have been a necessary party. R.V. King may be a necessary party also.
An order had been entered in this appeal concerning the problem of overburdening this record. That order was improvidently granted. It is set aside. We have examined the entire record.
Estoppel by Deed or Estoppel by Written Legal Instrument
We have examined in excess of 40 contracts for the sale of land, general warranty deeds, and conveyances. In virtually every one of these written legal instruments we find such language as:
“5. Furthermore, any mobile homes on this land will be kept concealed from passersby on the public road and from neighbors;
····
“12. ··· This land and the public road in front of this land shall be kept free of litter or trash.”
These “covenants and conditions are imposed as conditions running with the land on the property described ···” and are serious, written recitals, covenants and conditions. They, themselves, constitute strong, probative, primary evidence. These types of covenants and conditions have been characterized as a type of absolute estoppel. They arise from instruments of legal dignity; indeed, from the deeds, themselves, and from the contracts for the sale of land. Therefore, both King and La COUR Du ROI, INC., are firmly and finally estopped from taking the position that the roads in question are not public roads.
The learned, able trial court certainly committed reversible error in this regard. See Kimbro v. Hamilton, 28 Tex. 560 (1866); Havard v. Smith, 13 S.W.2d 743 (Tex.Civ.App.-Beaumont 1929, no writ); Elliott v. Langham, 60 S.W.2d 287 (Tex.Civ.App.-Waco 1933, no writ).
For the reasons, findings and holdings set out above, we reverse the judgment and remand the whole cause for a new trial on the entirety of the cause of action consistent and harmonious with this opinion. And as an additional, separate and independent basis for our decision, we reverse the judgment and remand the entire cause for a new trial because some of the important issues in the case were not adequately or fully developed. Having found reversible error, and as an additional, separate and independent basis for our decision, we reverse and remand in the interest of justice.
REVERSED AND REMANDED.
Tex.App. Beaumont 1985.
La Cour Du Roi, Inc. v. Montgomery County
698 S.W.2d 178
judson witham <jurisnot <at> yahoo.com> wrote:
“The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists”.
J. Edgar Hoover, former head of the FBI
The GHOSTS of Pinewood Village
The Grand Daddy of all
Illegal “Red Flag” land Developments in
The State Of Texas
The Arizona Connection !!!!
DON CLESSON and ROBERT L. VICKERS !
Every Arizona County and hundreds of thousands of trusting land purchasers were victimized by the rampant land scams of the 1960’s. Artist renditions showed trees and lakes with boating and all the modern facilities: streets, street lights, golf courses, a real piece of the American dream. The true picture was a section of dry Arizona deserts with no development whatsoever. Although Arizona has the reputation of being the worst in the nation, Florida was not far behind and many states had similar swindles take place during the same time period…..
Land fraud, bankruptcy, murder, suicide, incarceration and greed surround the history of Cochise College Park subdivision. Located in Cochise County, consisting of 2 phases of 12 units totaling 8,647 lots, it was the worst fraud in the states and possibly the Nation. The scenic lake at Cochise College Park was filled several times but never would hold water. They sold lots throughout the Midwest, Florida, Canada, across the United States and around the world. Some lots were sold twice. Some mortgages were sold twice. Many documents remain unrecorded today. Some owners never received their deed. Some received deeds but never received satisfaction of their mortgage. Some paid mortgages in full and received satisfaction of the mortgage only to learn the mortgage was sold and the second sale never recorded. The original mortgage is still on record at the County Recorder’s office. They paid on an unrecorded mortgage. This story was repeated in various degrees across the State creating tangled subdivisions with many unbuildable lots…..
“Vickers, 58, was sentenced to five years in prison on Oct. 12, 1988, in Arizona for money laundering and conducting an illegal enterprise.”
“V” asks
WHERE Oh WHERE IS THAT
$ 500 BILLION $
Missing From TEXAS !!!!!
To Mr. Mike McDougal, Montgomery County District Attorney ;
Montgomery County Commissioners, Commissioners Court Judge Alan B. Sadler, US Justice Department Assistant US Attorney Houston, US Secret Service H ouston (Agent Rick Willaims) Texas State Attorney general Gregg Abbott, FBI HOUSTON, Phoenix Arizona, Mr. Rad Sallee.
Donald Clesson, WB Etheridge’s , Thomas Eikel’s, WG Horne III partner
Robert L. Vickers N>was an ORIGINAL PRINCIPLE in PINEWOOD VILLAGE in Pct 4 of Montgomery County. It seems coming up with Slippery Loans and FALSIFIED TITLE INSURANCE (Eagle Title) was a very, very, very widespread CRIME during the S&L and Bank Looting Days. Judson Witham has been RIGHT all along, AMERICAN TITLEINSURANCE you know Nelda Luce’s and Tim Herron’s Clients at Hope and Mayes , Judge Mayes’s Lawfirm !!! were IN ON THE FRAUD with Western Bank from the Git Go.
“Vickers, 58, was sentenced to five years in prison on Oct. 12, 1988, in Arizona for money laundering and conducting an illegal enterprise.”
WHERE Oh WHERE IS THAT 500 BILLION ??
FACT : In taking over Charles Keating’s notorious Lincoln
Savings & Loan, the RTC acquired some $1 billion worth of
property, including plots for 17 Red Flag Subdivisions in
Texas, Arizona, Colorado, Florida and Louisiana. One of them
is the 20,000-acre Estrella Project in the desert 20 miles
southwest of Phoenix. Although Lincoln invested $200 million
in preparatory work, only three homesites have been sold. !!
except from article below !!
Paper: HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Date: SAT 12/23/1989
Section: A
Page: 17
Edition: 2 STAR
$14 million frozen in lawsuit alleging mortgage fraud B>
By RAD SALLEE
Staff
.
A federal judge here Friday agreed to freeze up to $14 million in South Texas bank deposits after a New York lender alleged that officials of five companies in Corpus Christi and Houston , including two lawyers, engaged in mortgage fraud.
A lawsuit by Pioneer Commercial Funding Corp. says the defendants created bogus documents to obtain funds from Pioneer, ostensibly to be reloaned to buyers of homes in Houston ‘s Runningbrook subdivision and elsewhere. Instead, it says, the money w as stolen.
The lawsuit accuses the defendants of racketeering, which allows the court to award triple damages if proven. Pioneer is seeking $14 million in actual damages and $42 million in punitive damages.
U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt signed an order taking control of the deposits in two accounts held in the Bank of Robstown by Mortgage CreditCorp Inc. of Corpus Christi .
Pioneer’s attorney Steven Zager said he does not know how much money is in the accounts. He said Pioneer will go after any funds held by any of the defendants, but knows only of the two accoun ts in Robstown.
The list of 19 defendants is headed by William J. Cartwright Sr. of Corpus Christi , named as president and majority owner of Mortgage CreditCorp and two other companies there, The Cartwright Group Inc. and First State Investors Inc.
Other defendants in Corpus Christi are his sons, William Jr. and Robert H. Cartwright, and Veronica J. Cartwright, who are officers and stockholders in the three companies; Rosmare Saldivar and Melvin Smoots, officers of Mortgage CreditCorp and The Cartwright Group Inc.; William H. Whittle, an attorney and stockholder i n Mortgage CreditCorp; and James P. Page. The companies are also defendants.
The Houston defendants are John S. Pipkin, an officer and majority stockholder in Beau-Bay Development Corp. here; his brother Roger W. Pipkin III and his son Roger W. Pipkin IV, both officers and stockholders in the company; and three persons employed by C&P Realty here, attorney Robert L. Vickers, real estate appraiser Steven F. Thomae and Kelly Alan Wohlers.
Pioneer, a “warehouse lender,” advances funds to mortgage companies, which lend them in turn to home buyers. To obtain funds, a mortgage company sends Pioneer a package that includes the home buyer’s credit application, promissory note, deed of trust, property appraisal, title policy commitment and proof of insurance.
The lawsuit says Pioneer agreed to provide Mortgage CreditCorp up to $35 million for such loans, but sometime in 1989, the defendants began creating packages including “fictitious deeds of trust, counterfeit title commitments, fraudulent credit applications, phony appraisals and bogus insurance policies.’ The lawsuit says William J. Cartwright Sr. and others conspired to buy more than 90 vacant lots, most of them in R unningbrook, at foreclosure sales at bargain prices, then transferred the titles to Beau-Bay and C&P Realty.
Fraudulent packages for a number of fictitious buyers were prepared by other defendants, who presented them to Pioneer.
“Neither the houses nor the underlying mortgage transactions actually existed,” the lawsuit says. It says Pioneer lost at least $14 million as a result.
Zager said that attorney Whittle’s signature is on the deeds of trust and that attorney Vickers’ is on the title policy commitments.
The latter were on Stewart Title letterhead, but a Stewart official said the company did not provide them, Zager said. The title tracking numbers are assigned to Associated Title, but that company also disclaimed them, Zager said.
An affidavit made Tuesday by Wohlers’ fiancee, Leslie Ann Lehman, says she signed false loan documents for four homes at his request after he told her “it was all right.’ “I have never seen the property, did not purchase the property and these documents are false,” her affidavit says.
Page said he worked for Mortgage Credit for about six months and “warehoused mortgage loans with Pioneer,” but knows nothing about the alleged scheme. John S. Pipkin declined to comment until he sees the lawsuit, as did former U.S. Attorney Tony Canales of Corpus Christi, who represents The Cartwright Group. The other defendants could not be reached for comment.
Past Employment Positions
•Southern District of Texas , U.S. Attorney, 1977 – 1980
Paper: HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Date: FRI 12/29/1989
Section: A
Page: 28
Edition: 2 STAR
Funds at more banks frozen in fraud case
By RAD SALLEE
Staff
.
A federal judge here Thursday froze accounts in four more banks at the request of attorneys in a lawsuit alleging a $14 million mortgage fraud scheme by companies and at least two lawyers in Houston and Corpus Christi .
U.S. District Judge Norman Black issued sealed orders to freeze defendants’ accounts in Memorial Bank and Texas Guaranty National Bank in Houston , Mason Road Bank in Katy and First National Bank Gulfway in Corpus Christi .
U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt last Friday authorized freezing two accounts in the Bank of Robstown near Corpus Christi on request of the plaintiff, Pione er Commercial Funding Corp., a New York “warehouse lender” that advances money to mortgage companies for home loans.
The defendants allegedly prepared fraudulent loan application packages involving vacant lots in Houston ‘s Runningbrook subdivision and elsewhere, claiming they had 20-year-old homes on them.
Pioneer’s attorney, Steve Zager, said Thursday’s orders were sought from Black because Hoyt, whose court has the case, was out of town.
The defendant companies allegedly obtained loans from Pioneer by submitting bogus documents, including credit applications, promissory notes, deeds of trust, property appraisals, title policy commitments and proof of insurance. At least three potential witnesses have said they falsified such documents for a small fee or at a boyfriend’s request, Zager said.
The list of 19 defendants is headed by William J. Cartwright Sr. of Corpus Christi , named in the lawsuit as president and majority owner of Mortgage CreditCorp and two other companies there, The Cartwright Group Inc. and First State Investors Inc. SPAN>
Other defendants from Corpus Christi are Cartwright’s sons, William Jr. and Robert H. Cartwright, and Veronica J. Cartwright, who are officers and stockholders in the three companies; Rosmare Saldivar and Melvin Smoots, officers of Mortgage CreditCorp and The Cartwright Group Inc.; William H. Whittle, an attorney and stockholder in Mortgage CreditCorp; and James P. Page. The companies are also defendants.
The Houston defendants are John S. Pipkin, an officer and majority stockholder in Beau-Bay Development Corp. here; his brother Roger W. Pipkin III and his son Roger W. Pipkin IV, both officers and stockholders in the company; and three persons employed by C&P Realty here, attorney Robert L. Vickers, real estate appraiser Steven F. Thomae and Kelly Alan Wohlers.
The lawsuit accuses the defendants of racketeering, which allows the court to award triple damages if proven. Pioneer is seeking $14 million in actual damages and $42 million in punitive damages.
Zager said fede ral marshals served Black’s freeze orders Thursday after wire transfers were traced to the Houston area accounts from the Robstown accounts of Mortgage CreditCorp, which Hoyt had frozen. The latter turned out to contain about $300,000. Up to $14 million may be frozen if found.
Zager said the Mason Road account here is in the name of Vickers, who denies any connection with it. Zager said another attorney here withdrew about $10,000 from the account on Wednesday, emptying it.
Zager said Vickers, 58, was sentenced to five years in prison on Oct. 12, 1988, i n Arizona for money laundering and conducting an illegal enterprise.
Investigator Clyde Wilson said he reached Vickers by phone in a Yuma , Ariz. , prison, and Vickers told him his name is being used by others, but he is not involved in the scheme. Zager said Vickers’signature, provided by his wife here, does not match those on the allegedly bogus documents.
Zager said Robert Cartwright was sentenced in 1979 to 12 years in prison for misapplying funds, conspiracy and making false loan applications, but has been released.
Zager said First State Investors has accounts at Gulfway and Mason Road banks; C&P Realty has accounts at Gulfway , Texas Guaranty and Memorial; and Wohlers’ company, Inland Towing and Transportation, has accounts at Memorial.
“The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists”.
J. Edgar Hoover, former he ad of the FBI
Austin Texas May 19th 1931
Texas Legislature – House Bill 473 – By Wenert et al
Passed 31 ayes to O nays
HB 473 – Section 3 see former Texas Penal Code 1137h
The fact that many parties have delivered to purchasers deeds and contracts to real estate described according to some subdivision or resubdivision when in fact no such subdivision or resubdivision was of record then or thereafter resulting in great confusion of titles and fraud to purchasers, and the fact that such practices will continue unless prohibited, creates an emergency and an imperative public necessity that the Constitutional Rule requiring bills to be read on three several days in each House be suspended, and said rule is hereby suspended, and that this Act shall be in effect from and after its paaasge, and it is so enacted.
Witnessed by Edgar Witt President of the Senate
Sent to Enrolling Clerk May 19th 1931
contracts to real estate unambiguously and in plain English means ANY and ALL or Every Contract
The Cardinal Rule Of Statutory Interpretation applies and If Properly Parsed and ALL words within the enactment are given the ordinary meaning
Texas Penal Code 1137h and Article 6626c et al APPLY to ALL CONTRACTS TO REAL ESTATE
Article 6626c, V.T.C.S. The provision provides:
Section 1. No party shall file for record or have recorded in the official records in the County Clerk’s office any map or plat of a subdivision or resubdivision of real estate without first securing approval therefor as may be provided by law, and no party so subdividing or resubdividing any real estate shall use the subdivision’s or resubdivision’s description in any deed of conveyance or contract of sale delivered to a purchaser unless and until the map and plat of such subdi vision or resubdivision shall have been duly authorized as aforesaid and such map and plat thereof has actually been filed for record with the Clerk of the County Court of the county in which the real estate is situated.
Sec. 2. Any party violating any provision of Section 1 of this Act shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction thereof shall be fined in a sum not less than Ten Dollars ($10.00) nor more than Five Hundred Dollars ($500.00), or confined in the county jail not exceeding ninety (90) days, or both such fine and imprisonment, and each act of violation shall constitute a separate offense, and in addition to the above penalties, any violation of the provisions of Section 1 of this Act shall constitute prima facie evidence of an attempt to defraud. (Emphasis added).
This article was transferred from article 1137h of Vernon’s Penal Code by authority of section 5 of Acts 1973, 63rd Leg., ch. 399, at 995, enacting the new Penal Code.
A person may be prosecuted under article 6626c, V.T.C.S., in two separate circumstances. First, for the act of recording, and secondly, for the act of selling property making a reference to an unrecorded map or plat. In Attorney General Opinion M-390 (1969), this office held that the second circumstance makes a misdemeanor offense of a conveyance by a subdivider where the property description depends for its location upon reference to a subdivision plat which has not been duly authorized as provided by law and/or has not been filed for record. Use of the subdivision description is not cured by additional metes and bounds descriptions, which in themselves must rely upon the unrecorded plat for location of the property on the ground. (Emphasis added).
Former Texas Penal Code 1137h was the Codification of HB 473 of May 19th 1931 the Texas Legislature was reacting to the MASSIVE Bank and S&L Lootings and Failures associated with MASSIVE TEXAS Land FRAUDS of the 1920s. (These Massive Land Schemes also were rampant in FL ORIDA during the same period. The FHLBB and Later HUD enacted the Land Sales Registration Act Texas AG Greg Abbott READ SECTION 3 of HB 473
Land Speculation
The favorite object of speculation in America before the era of big business was public land. Investors could buy it cheaply in large quantities and withhold it from market, if they had sufficient capital to carry it, until rising prices brought profits. Memories of high land values in the Old World and of the social prestige enjoyed by the possessor of broad acres produced in Americans an insatiable lust for land.
Land speculation began with the first settlements in America. The Virginia proprietors, disappointed at the meager returns from their investment, granted themselves great tracts of land from which they hoped to draw substantial incomes. Similarly, the Penns and Calverts in Pennsylvania and Maryland and the early proprietors of New York, New Jersey, and the Carolinas speculated in land in an imperial way. Later in the colonial period, a new crop of land companies composed of English and colonial speculators sought both title to and political control over great tracts in the MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. The Mississippi, the Georgiana, the Wabash, the Indiana, the Loyal, and the Ohio land companies attracted some of the ablest colonial leaders into their ranks, among them George Was hington, Richard Henry Lee, Benjamin Franklin, the Whartons, and George Croghan. The struggles of these rival companies for charters and grants played an important role in British colonial policy during the years before the Revolution.
The trival land claims of the colonies matched company rivalries. One of the most notable was the conflict between Connecticut and Pennsylvania for the Wyoming Valley, which Connecticut granted to the Susquehanna Land Company. In western Virginia, Richard Henderson and his Transylvania Company, which claimed title to a great tract received from the Indians, came into conflict with Virginia and were successful in receiving only a small part of the area confirmed to them.
Most influential colonials tried their luck at speculating, either through the land companies or on their own account. George Washington was a large landowner in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and the Ohio country; Rob ert and Gouverneur Morris, William Duer, Oliver Phelps, Nathaniel Gorham, and William Johnson acquired princely domains in Pennsylvania, New York, and Maine. The Morrises negotiated a number of large purchases and resold tracts to others; perhaps the largest of them went to the Holland Land Company. Dutch capitalists who bought the Holland Reserve in western New York and were busily engaged in settling it during the first third of the nineteenth century made up this company. In the meantime, speculators received parcels comprising most of upstate New York. Among the most prominent of the speculators were the Wadsworths of the Genesee country, John Jacob Astor, and Peter Smith, father of Gerrit Smith. These men, unlike Robert Morris, were able to retain their lands long enough either to resell at high prices or settle tenants on them.
The largest purchase and the most stupendous fraud was the sale in 1795 of 21.5 million acres of western lands in Yazoo River c ountry by the legislature of Georgia to four companies for one and one-half cents an acre. The next legislature canceled the sale, but the purchasers, frequently innocent third parties, waged a long fight to secure justice, claiming that the obligation of the contract clause in the federal Constitution prevented the Georgia legislature from reversing the original sale. The SUPREME COURT, in Fletcher v. Peck (1810), agreed with this interpretation. The Yazoo frauds became a cause célèbre in which John Randolph, Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and other notables took prominent parts.
Undeveloped Lands
When donations by states with western land claims created the public domain of the United States, speculative interests converged upon Congress with requests to purchase tracts of land north of the OHIO RIVERALL>. In fact, the land speculation craze was partly responsible for the adoption of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which set up a government for the ceded territory north of the Ohio. A group of New England capitalists known as the Ohio Company of Associates wished to buy a tract of land in southeastern Ohio for a New England settlement. To get the measure through Congress, it seemed necessary to enlarge the original project and to create a second organization, the Scioto Company, which consisted of members of Congress and other influential people who planned to buy some 5 million acres of land. The formation of the Scioto Company increased support for the enactment of the Northwest Ordinance, but the company itself was a failure because it could not fulfill its contract with the government. The Ohio Company of Associates did, however, succeed in planting a little New England outpost at Marietta on the Ohio River. In 1788 John Cleves Symmes of New Jersey also bought a la rge tract from Congress. These purchases virtually defeated the purpose of the Land Ordinance of 1785, which authorized the sale of land at $1.00 an acre, or a third more than the Scioto Company paid, and the Land Act of 1796, which raised the price to $2.00 an acre, because the speculators whom Congress had allowed to acquire large tracts of land at lower prices than were offered to individual settlers were able to undersell the government.
There were three land speculation periods after the creation of the public domain: 1817–1819, 1834–1837, and 1853–1857. Easterners such as Daniel Webster, Caleb Cushing, Edward Everett, Amos Lawrence, Moses and John Carter Brown, and James S. Wadsworth and southerners such as John C. Breckinridge, John Slidell, Eli Shorter, and William Grayson bought western lands in large quantities. Speculators again organized land companies, and they entered tracts embracing entire town-ships. The New York and Bost on Illinois Land Company acquired 900,000 acres in the Military Tract of Illinois; the American Land Company had estates in Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Mississippi, and Arkansas; and the Boston and Western Land Company owned 60,000 acres in Illinois and Wisconsin.
The Homestead Act of 1862 did not end land speculation; some of the largest purchases occurred after it was passed. William S. Chapman alone bought over 1 million acres of land in California and Nevada; Henry W. Sage, John McGraw, and Jeremiah Dwight, benefactors of Cornell University, entered 352,000 acres of timberland in the Northwest and the South; and Francis Palms and Frederick E. Driggs bought 486,000 acres of timberland in Wisconsin and Michigan. Not until 1889 did the federal government take effective steps to end large speculative purchases, and by that date it had parted with its best lands. At the same time, the canal and railroad land grants and the lands g iven to the states for drainage and educational purposes were also attracting a great deal of speculative purchasing.
The accumulation of vast quantities of land in advance of settlement created many problems for the West, some of which remain unsolved. The Indians lost their lands more rapidly than the needs of the population dictated, and more social control of westward expansion and land purchases might have prevented the frequent clashes between settlers and Indians. In some places, absentee proprietors who withheld large amounts of land from development while waiting for higher prices created “speculators’ deserts.” Settlers were widely dispersed because they could not find land at reasonable prices close to existing settlements. This settlement pattern consequently aggravated the problem of providing transportation facilities, and as a result of the importunities of settlers, developers built thousands of miles of railroads through sparsely settled coun try, which could provide but little traffic for the roads.
Nevertheless, the speculators and land companies were an important factor in the development of the West. Their efforts to attract settlers to their lands through the distribution of pamphlets and other literature describing the western country lured thousands from their homes in the eastern states and the countries of northern Europe to the newly developing sections of the West. They also aided in building improvements, such as roads, canals, and railroads, to make the life of the immigrant easier. Land speculators were often unpopular and regarded unfavorably in newly opened areas because they often left their holdings undeveloped. By contrast, local people, actively selling and improving their holdings and thus contributing to the growth of the town and country, were shown every favor, were popular, and were frequently elected to public office.
The land reform movement, with its corollary limitation of land sales, had as its objective the retention of the public lands for free homesteads for settlers. Beginning in 1841, new land acts, such as the Preemption Act (1841), the Graduation Act (1854), the Homestead Act (1862), the Timber Culture Act (1873), and the Timber and Stone Act (1878) restricted sales to 160 or 320 acres. Nevertheless, the cash sale system continued, although after 1862 very little new land became open to unrestricted entry, and large purchases were made only in areas previously opened to sale. Although reformers had tolerated the granting of land to railroads in the 1850s and 1860s, they later turned against this practice and began a move to have forfeited the grants unearned by failure to build railroads. In the midst of a strong revulsion against what were called “monopolistic” landholdings by railroads, cattle kings, and lumber companies in 1888– 1891, Congress adopted the Land Forfeiture Act of 1890, which require d the return of unearned grants to the public domain, and enacted other measures to end the cash sale system, to limit the amount of land that an individual could acquire from the government to 320 acres, and to make it more difficult to abuse the settlement laws. However, through the use of dummy entrymen and the connivance of local land officers, land accumulation continued.
Urban Property
Speculation in urban property was not so well structured as was speculation in rural lands, but investors widely indulged in it and found it subject to the same excesses in periods of active industrial growth and to a similar drastic deflation in values following the economic crises of 1837, 1857, 1873, and 1930–1933. During the boom years, prices for choice real estate in New York and other rapidly growing cities skyrocketed, only to decline when depression brought economic activity to a grinding halt. Old-line families made fortunes in New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago from swiftly rising real estate values. Among the parvenus, the best known is John Jacob Astor; the great wealth he accumulated enabled his family to rise to the top of the social ladder. With remarkable prescience, between 1800 and 1840, Astor invested $2 million, made from his trade with China and from returns in his land business, in land in Greenwich Village and elsewhere in Manhattan, but outside New York City limits. He acquired the fee simple to the land bought from Aaron Burr and George Clinton and took long-term leases on land from Trinity Church. After dividing the acreage bought from Clinton into blocks and lots, he waited until the demand rose and then began selling. His profit from these sales was substantial, but in later years he concentrated on granting long leases on his property. By his death, his rent roll alone was bringing in $200,000 annually. His estate, valued at from $18 million to $20 million, mostly invested in real estate that was rapidly appreciating, had made him the richest man in the country. In two successive generations, the family fortune, still concentrated in Manhattan real estate, increased to $50 million and $100 million. Other New York families were enjoying like successes in the burgeoning real estate market. The purchase in 1929 by John D. Rockefeller Jr. of a long-term lease from Columbia University for the 11-acre tract on which he built Rockefeller Center was the most spectacular real estate transaction up to that point. He was able to get an eighty-seven-year lease for a ground rent of $3.3 million a year. With other city property, this acquisition placed the Rockefeller family among the largest owners of New York property.
In every growing city, similar increases in land values occurred, to the profit of those whose families by wisdom or good luck acquired land early. In Chicago, for example, lots on State Street between Monroe and Adams climbed from $25 per front foot in 1836 to $27,500 in 1931, a depression year. The families of Potter Palmer, Walter L. Newberry, and George M. Pullman were representative of the new rich in the Windy City.
Each generation produced its new millionaires: those who had the foresight to buy land in promising urban centers when prices were low. The spendthrift lifestyle of the new millionaires and their children aroused resentment, especially among the followers of Henry George. To tax the unearned increment in rising land values for the social good, George proposed a single tax on land so that the enhanced value of land that stemmed from society’s growth would benefit the government directly. He also criticized the concentration of rural land ownership in a few hands, a situation most evident in California. Appropriately, George had his largest following in New York, where econom ic pressures had pushed up land values. To further his reforms, George offered himself as an independent candidate for mayor in New York in 1886. Without any party machine to fight for him and protect his interests at the polls, he still won 30 percent of the vote, against 41 percent for Tammany’s candidate and 23 percent for Theodore Roosevelt, the Republican candidate. By that time, George was the best-known economist in the country. Few people in America or Great Britain were unaware of his single-tax proposal and his strictures on the unearned increment that was creating so many millionaires.
For everyone who turned to land and tax reform there were several who tried to emulate, on a smaller scale, the achievements of the Astors, the Schermerhorns, and the Hetty Greens by getting in on the ground floor of promising municipalities. In some states, particularly Illinois, eastern Iowa, and Kansas, town-site promoters took up hundreds of qua rter sections of public land; laid out their blocks and lots; prepared alluring lithographed maps showing imagined buildings, factories, and homes; and peddled their towns, blocks, and lots in older communities that had long since given up the prospect of becoming miracle cities. Most of these dream cities never flourished, but a few, with aggressive leadership, managed to become the county seat, the territorial or state capital, or a railroad center, or managed to acquire the U.S. land office, a religious college, or a state university or other public institution. These few grew moderately.
Among the major promoters of towns and cities were the land-grant railroads, which created station sites every ten or fifteen miles along their routes and offered numerous advantages to persons and institutions for locating in the vicinity. The officers of the Illinois Central alone laid out thirty-seven towns in Illinois, and the transcontinental railroads created far more communities around their stations. In fact, the struggle of town promoters to bring railroads and state and federal institutions to their communities constitutes one of the central themes of western American history. Some of these once-flourishing cities or towns have become ghost towns; few have gone on to flourish and grow.
The United States did not accept Henry George’s view that profits from rising land values should be used for the public good, but it has increasingly sought to restrict property owners’ rights by zoning regulations in both rural and urban areas. The outstanding illustration of such action is New York State’s Adirondack Park Agency Act of 1971, intended to protect the wild character of the Adirondacks. The law curbs the creation of subdivisions with numerous small sites for second homes.
Bibliography
Feller, Daniel. The Public Lands in Jacksonian Politics. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984.
Gates, Paul Wallace. The Jeffersonian Dream: Studies in the History of American Land Policy and Development. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996.
Hyman, Harold M. American Singularity: The 1787 Northwest Ordinance, the 1862 Homestead and Morrill Acts, and the 1944 G.I. Bill. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986.
Oberly, James Warren. Sixty Million Acres: American Veterans and the Public Lands before the Civil War. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1990.
Williams, Frederick D. The Northwest Ordinance: Essays on Its Formulation, Provisions, and Legacy. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1989.
judson witham <jurisnot <at> yahoo.com> wrote:
Just Like Whitewater and Castle Grande, Stonebridge Ranch and Lake Of The Pines, etc. et al – Spurious Land Deals used to ROB Banksand S&Ls / HUD , Defraud The Public and Finance Campaigns ( sing to the tune, Whitewater, Web Hubble Madison S&L , Hillary Clinton, Rose Lawfirm WESTERN BANK HOUSTON, AMERICAN TITLE INSURANCE 500 BILLION MISSING DOLLARS BLUES)
WHERE Oh WHERE IS THAT 500 BILLION ??
FACT : In taking over Charles Keating’s notorious Lincoln Savings & Loan, the RTC acquired some $1 billion worth of property, including plots for 17 planned communities in Texas, Arizona, Colorado, Florida and Louisiana. One of them is the 20,000-acre Estrella Project in the desert 20 miles southwest of Phoenix. Although Lincoln invested $200 million in preparatory work, only three homesites have been sold. !! except from article below !!
Every Arizona County and hundreds of thousands of trusting land purchasers were victimized by the rampant land scams of the 1960’s. Artist renditions showed trees and lakes with boating and all the modern facilities: streets, street lights, golf courses, a real piece of the American dream. The true picture was a section of dry Arizona deserts with no development whatsoever. Although Arizona has the reputation of being the worst in the nation, Florida was not far behind and many states had similar swindles take place during the same time period…..
Land fraud, bankruptcy, murder, suicide, incarceration and greed surround the history of Cochise College Park subdivision. Located in Cochise County, consisting of 2 phases of 12 units totaling 8,647 lots, it was the worst fraud in the states and possibly the Nation. The scenic lake at Cochise College Park was filled several times but never would hold water. They sold lots throughout the Midwest, Florida, Canada, across the United States and around the world. Some lots were sold twice. Some mortgages were sold twice. Many documents remain unrecorded today. Some owners never rec eived their deed. Some received deeds but never received satisfaction of their mortgage. Some paid mortgages in full and received satisfaction of the mortgage only to learn the mortgage was sold and the second sale never recorded. The original mortgage is still on record at the County Recorder’s office. They paid on an unrecorded mortgage. This story was repeated in various degrees across the State creating tangled subdivisions with many unbuildable lots…..
See Ol “Kat” Woolford at:
SEE http://www.geocities.com/jurisnot The Great Texas Bank Job IT’s NO JOKE
Kat Woolford (BBA ’72) of Baton Rouge, La., has done a little bit of everything since graduation: exercised race horses, worked for the Liquidation Division of the FDIC, and served as an advisor to the Bank of Latvia and the National Bank of Romania.
CIA LIKE I SAID
http://www.uga.edu/~gm/1298/Notes2.html
http://www.usaid.gov/locations/europe_eurasia/mt/images/fsnl.pdf#search=’Woolford,%20FDIC’
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1218/is_n23_v107/ai_n12428575
For sale by owner: junk real estate
US News & World Report, Dec 11, 1989 by Monroe W. Karmin
For the grab bag of less luxurious listings that constitute the bulk of the RTC po rtfolio – foreclosed homes, motels, shopping malls, office and apartment buildings, industrial parks and vacant land – the market seems even more forbidding. Still, plucky sales agents are rising to the challenge. “The roof dips a tudge on one side, the porch has a hole in it and there are termites,” admits Kat Woolford, who is hawking a $7,500, two-bedroom shack on a third of an acre in Tomball, Tex., north of Houston. “But it’s a cute hideaway.”
Arizona real estate for sale: For sale by ow ner: junk real estate
For sale by owner: Junk real estate
Just as Americans have grown used to the idea of junk bonds, a new financial bugaboo looms on the horizon: Junk real estate. Set in desirable communities, many of the properties now being jettisoned by insolvent savings and loan institutions seem to be paradise. But like the 9-acre swath of Long Island beachfront off the Texas Gulf Coast, spectacular vistas rarely live up to a developer’s dreams. Over half of the $400,000 Laguna Madre parcel lies underwater. There is no sewer hookup and no sea wall, and there are high fees to maintain a private bridge that connects the island with Port Isabel on the mainland. “It could all go underwater in a hurricane,” admits a spokesman for La Hacienda Savings Association in San Antonio, which holds the property.
Peddling Texas swampland is just one of the dirty jobs facing the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC), the U.S. agency that opened sh op in early August to administer the coup de grace to sick thrifts. The mop-up has landed federal regulators in the same muck that mired the S&L industry: Thousands of white-elephant properties, most located in markets as soft as quicksand. The collection includes such exotica as a $900,000 equestrian center (reduced from $1.5 million) north of San Antonio, the $25 million StarPass golf-course community in Tucson, a historic bank building in Houston, a boarded-up lumberyard surrounded by wetlands near Tampa, Fla., 77 condominium units on the tip of Long Island, N.Y., and a 55 percent stake in the opulent $200 million Phoenician Resort in Scottsdale, Ariz. All told, RTC officials estimate they now must dispose of close to $16 billion worth of real estate currently on the books of 268 failed thrifts in 33 states.
Fool’s gold. Most of the properties will fetch pennies on the dollar’s worth of book value – if they can be unloaded at all. The 6-acre McCune Mansion in Paradise Valley outside of Phoenix is typical of the RTC’s daunting task. Built in the 1960s by oil tycoon Walker McCune for his young bride, the 53,000-square-foot house boasts numerous kitchens, a ballroom with an $80,000 chandelier, an Olympic-sized swimming pool and ice-skating rink, a theater, a darkroom, its own beauty salon, a 14-car garage and a guest house. Mrs. McCune refused to move in, and the pl ace saw a succession of owners, most recently Gordon Hall, cofounder of the Nautilus fitness company. RTC inherited the property when it took over the bankrupt Southwest Savings & Loan Association earlier this year. “There’s not a great market for 53,000-square-foot houses,” says Jack Lake, the RTC agent charged with finding a buyer.
For the grab bag of less luxurious listings that constitute the bulk of the RTC portfolio – foreclosed homes, motels, shopping malls, office and apartment buildings, industrial parks and vacant land – the market seems even more forbidding. Still, plucky sales agents are rising to the challenge. “The roof dips a tudge on one side, the porch has a hole in it and there are termites,” admits Kat Woolford, who is hawking a $7,500, two-bedroom shack on a third of an acre in Tomball, Tex., north of Houston. “But it’s a cute hideaway.”
The heat is on for the RTC to speed up its fire sale. The agency has three years to gather up al l the nation’s ailing S&L’s and seven years to dispose of acquired properties. Ideally, the feds would like to get rid of their sick thrifts as whole entities, bad real-estate investments and all. But most investors are interested only in the best assets, saddling the government with the white elephants. The longer the RTC hangs on to the losers, the higher the taxpayers’ tab, already estimated at $166 billion.
But the disposal process is being hindered by the fact that no one knows how much sour real estate the RTC will have to offer. An initial inventory of properties currently under its wing will not be completed until the end of this month. And that is just the beginning. Leonard Sahling, real-estate analyst for Merrill Lynch in New York, figures the government will wind up with at least a $50 billion portfolio when it actually takes over all the thrifts that now are technically insolvent. Others put the total at $100 billion as more S&L’s go belly up in the years ahead.
Nor can the RTC simply dump its holdings on the market wholesale. “Everything we have is for sale,” says Thomas Horton, the agency’s deputy director, “but everything is not for sale at any price.” The government is barred by law from selling its assets for less than 95 percent of fair market value in the six depressed states of the Southwest – Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado and Louisiana – where about two thirds of the property is located. Still, “fair market value” is in the eye of the appraiser; Horton admits that properties that cannot be sold at 5 percent discounts will be “re-evaluated” until buyers are found.
The most promising properties in the RTC’s bag, mainly apartment and office buildings whose rents cover expenses, are sure to be snapped up by insurance companies, pension funds and other “deep pocket” investors. But such quality properties are in the minority. The largest proportion of the government’s holdi ngs consists of vacant land, a tough commodity to peddle in the Southwest and other overbuilt areas.
In taking over Charles Keating’s notorious Lincoln Savings & Loan, the RTC acquired some $1 billion worth of property, including plots for 17 planned communities in Texas, Arizona, Colorado, Florida and Louisiana. One of them is the 20,000-acre Estrella Project in the desert 20 miles southwest of Phoenix. Although Lincoln invested $200 million in preparatory work, only three homesites have been sold. Now the RTC’s agent, Mark Randall, is trying to figure out what to do with the property. “Vacant real estate has not fared well in the Arizona economy,” he observes sadly.
Other parcels may not draw buyers – no matter how attractive the price. “They’ll have to be plowed under to grow soybeans,” predicts Michael Aronstein, president of Comstock Partners, a New York investment firm. But while developers may sniff at many of the government’s offerings, inter est is cropping up in some surprising quarters. Conservationists already are picking through the pile of unwanted real estate for wildlife preserves and other ecologically valuable property. The Florida Keys Land & Sea Trust, for instance, paid $1.35 million for Crane Point Hammock, a 63 1/2-acre estate that was going to be turned into a resort before its developers went broke. Now, it is slated to become a nature center.
PHOTO : Museum piece. The Phoenician Resort in
PHOTO : Picture perfect. Houston’s historic Franklin National Bank will appear in “Dark Angel”
PHOTO : Scottsdale, Ariz., comes decorated with millions of dollars’ worth of sculpture
PHOTO : Castle keep. The McCune mansion near Phoenix has a 14-car garage, an ice rink and a ballroom with an $80,000 chandelier
COPYRIGHT 1989 All rights reserved.
COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group
Paper: HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Date: SUN 09/24/1989
Section: C
Page: 1
Edition: 2 STAR
Road woes continue/Neighborhood battles county over upkeep
By PAUL McKAY
Staff
GRANGERLAND – The way Linda Collins sees it, road service in the Pioneer Trails subdivision should be a simple matter of the county accepting responsibility.
Collins and other residents of the subdivision near Grangerland pay taxes to Montgomery County for services that include road maintenance. Therefore, the county owes it to the residents to keep the roads – some of which turn to mush in rain – maintained and passable, Collins says.
“It’s as simple as that,” she asserts.
But that, say county officials, is an oversimplification.
Pioneer Trails is one of the county’s 338 “red flag” subdivisions – unrecorded developments that have substandard roads – still entangled in a complex web.
The web was largely wea ved during booming economic times, from the late 1960s through the early 1980s, when the county’s population more than doubled. The county in those years had neither the manpower, nor admittedly always the willingness, to ensure that rural subdivisions were recorded and the roads built up to county standards.
And buyers seduced by the area’s beautiful country environment weren’t inclined to read the fine print on sales contracts to learn for sure if the county or the developer was responsible for long-term road maintenance.
The legacy of the boom is most evident on a Pioneer Trails road named Willowisp, which in one secluded area has deteriorated into more of a grassy trail than a roadway.
It was during the county’s boom-and-build frenzy that Collins, 44, and husband, Raymond, bought property on Springfield Road in Pioneer Trails. By 1979, roads in the subdivision had deteriorated to such an extent that Mrs. Collins and residents stormed the county barn of Precinct 4 Commissioner Albert “Bull” Sall as, demanding repairs.
Sallas acquiesced, patching Springfield Road in spite of the fact, he says, that it wasn’t really the county’s responsibility.
Yet Collins has preserved a newspaper clipping of the encounter at the county barn, where Sallas was quoted as telling the residents, “If you marry a woman with a child, you accept responsibility for the child.”
Collins sees the clipping as an admission from Sallas that he’s responsible for the roads, wryly noting that “the commissioner hasn’t taken very good care of the children.”
Sallas says he never promised the residents he’d maintain all of Pioneer Trails, despite Collins’ claim to the contrary. In addition, he notes that the off ices of the district and county attorneys in recent years have tied his hands in legal knots, precluding him from working on roads that aren’t rightfully county property.
“They can send me to the penitentiary if I just go out and fix any old road,” he says.
Sallas and Commissioners Court in 1982 accepted a portion of Springfield Road into its maintenance system, leaving it with a fresh, black-topped surface that’s been well maintained. That portion was accepted largely because it was already in “reasonable compliance” with county standards, Assistant County Attorney Marc Winberry says.
The portion that fronts the Collins property was not in such good shape and consequently was not accepted, the attorney says.
After years of steady deterioration, despite the frequent patchwork done by Sallas, the stretch of road fronting the Collins house became so shoddy – and so hard on a mail carrier’s Jeep – that the postal service last month threatened to cut off delivery to Collins and 50 other residents whose mailboxes line the street.
Outraged by the potential loss of mail service, Collins protested to county officials, who recommended that she petition for the road to be accepted by prescription – a sort of squatter’s rights process that allows a private road to become public after 10 years of continuous public use. IV>
Commissioners Court approved the petition earlier this month and Sallas has since blacktopped the remainder of Springfield Road.
But Collins, though appreciative of the smooth new pavement in front of her house, is unappeased. The county, she says, still owes it to residents of the subdivision’s back areas – where Willowisp and two other roads are in wor se shape than Springfield ever was – to upgrade those streets and keep them maintained, too.
Sallas and the other county officials say they’ll do whatever is economically feasible to upgrade the roads to some degree of higher standards, even though it could be an expensive undertaking.
“The remaining roads have no base and no ditches and would require a considerable amount of work,” County Engineer Don Blanton recently told commissioners.
County officials say the residents may have to consider an agreement whereby the residents would pitch in money or materials and the county would provide the equipment and labor for the road improvements. Such agreements are frequently negotiated with residents of red flag subdivisions, Winberry says.
But Collins isn’t amenable such a proposal.
“That would be double taxation,” she says. “It’s the principle of the thing. These people pay road taxes just like everybody else and are not getting anything for it. They deserve roads that are just as decent as the ones that taxpayers in the rest of the subdivision get.”
Blanton, however, notes that county taxes go to other services besides road maintenance.
“Taxes go for law enforcement, to the health department and a lot of things. Road maintenance is one thing, but that’s actually a fairly small percentage of total taxes,” he says. “If you choose to live inside a city in Montgomery County, you don’t get the road maintenance for your county tax dollars.
“I’m not trying to minimize the fact that those people (in Pioneer Trails) have a road problem. They have a problem we can relate to because we see it every day. The problem goes a lot further than just this single subdivision.”
Sallas s ays the Pioneer Trails developer, Kap, Inc., of Houston, should be held liable for improving the roads if at all possible, he says.
Winberry says the developer already has denied liability for the subdivision, but that the county hasn’t ruled out the possibility of suing the company.
The county attorney’s office in recent years has aggressively pursued developers of red flag subdivisions through litigation, forcing many to bring substandard streets up to snuff. The office last year alone recovered $100,000 from developers in agreements reached outside of litigation, Winberry says.
Until an agreement can be hashed out in the Pioneer Trails case, some of the residents there will have to live with the bumps and muddy messes that leave their vehicles in disrepair.
“Pioneer Trails is probably one of the worst examples of an unrecorded subdivision,” Winberry says. “But it’s by no means unique.”
ENFORCEMENT <enforcement <at> sec.gov> wrote:
Dear Mr. Witham:
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The Commission conducts its investigations on a confidential basis to preserve the integrity of its investigative process as well as to protect persons against whom unfounded charges may be made or against whom the Commission determines that enforcement action is not necessary or appropriate. Subject to the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act, we cannot disclose to you any information which we may gather and we cannot confirm to you the existence or non-existence of an investigation, unless made a matter of pub lic record in proceedings brought before the Commission or in the courts.
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“http://www.sec.gov/complaint.shtml”www.sec.gov/complaint.shtml.
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We appreciate your interest in the work of the Commission and its Division of Enforcement.
Very truly yours,
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Chief, Office of Internet Enforcement
United States Securities & Exchange Commission
“www.galvan.org” <galvanhouston <at> yahoo.com> wrote:
“galvan <at> myway.com” <galvan <at> myway.com> wrote:
To: galvanhouston <at> yahoo.com
Subject: FW: Fwd: Clinton Associates
From: “galvan <at> myway.com”<galvan <at> myway.com>
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2007 19:02:19 -0500 (EST)
No banners. No pop-ups. No kidding.
Make My Way your home on the Web – http://www.myway.com Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2007 10:53:29 -0800 (PST)
From: Barbara Lukas <buzzardroost28 <at> yahoo.com>
Subject: Fwd: Clinton Associates
To: Anna Barron <annasbarron <at> hotmail.com>, John Burkholder <JMB1PHX <at> aol.com>,
Liz Day <ecday <at> houston.rr.com>, Diana Deen <dcmdeen <at> aol.com>,
Marie Florek <florek464 <at> bellsouth.net>,
bonny freeman <bonny <at> houston.rr.com>, Jimmi Galvan <galvan <at> myway.com>,
Sandy Mansel <aztanc <at> aol.com>, RoseAnn McCamey <g497love <at> aol.com>,
Virginia L Moherek <virgaam3 <at> sbcglobal.net>, Rose Schwin <rocknut2 <at> aol.com>,
Jim Ware <jlware <at> hotmail.com>
Note: forwarded message attached.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Ev eryone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail beta.
http://new.mail.yahoo.comFrom: “G Bennett” <bennett.g1 <at> sbcglobal.net>
To: “Barbara Lukas” <buzzardroost28 <at> yahoo.com>
Subject: Clinton Associates
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2007 08:16:35 -0600
Just a quick refresher course lest we forget what has
happened to many “friends”of the Clintons.
1-James McDougal – Clinton’s convicted Whitewater partner
died of an apparent heart attack, while in solitary
confinement. He was a key witness in Ken Starr’s
investigation.
2 -Mary Mahoney – A former White House intern was murdered
July 1997 at a Starbucks Coffee Shop in Georgetown. The
murder happened just after she was to go public with her
story of sexual harassment in the White House.
3- Vince Foster – Former White House councilor, and
colleague of Hillary Clinton at Little Rock’s Rose Law
firm. Died of a gunshot wound to the head, ruled a suicide.
4- Ron Brown – Secretary of Commerce and former DNC
Chairman. Reported to have died by impact in a plane
crash. A pathologist close to the investigation reported
that there was a hole in the top of Brown’s skull
resembling a gunshot wound. At the time of his death Brown
was being investigated, and spoke publicly of his
willingness to cut a deal with prosecutors. The rest of the
people on the plane also died. A few days later the air
Traffic controller commited suicide.
5- C. Victor Raiser II- Raiser, a major player in the
Clinton fund raising organization died in a private plane
crash in July 1992.
6-Paul Tulley – Democratic National Committee Political
Director found dead in a hotel room in Little Rock,
September 1992. Described by Clinton as a “Dear friend and
trusted advisor”.
7-Ed Willey – Clinton fund raiser, found dead November 1993deep in the woods in VA of a gunshot wound to the head.
Ruled a suicide. Ed Willey died on the same day his wife
Kathleen Willey claimed Bill Clinton groped her in the oval
office in the White House. Ed Willey was involved in several
Clinton fund raising events.
8-Jerry Parks -Head of Clinton’s gubernatorial security team
in Little Rock.
Gunned down in his car at a deserted intersection outside
Little Rock. Park’s son said his father was building a
dossier on Clinton. He allegedly threatened to reveal this
information. After he died the files were mysteriously
removed from his house.
9-James Bunch – Died from a gunshot suicide. It was reported
that he had a “Black Book” of people which contained names
of influential people who visited prostitutes in Texas and
Arkansas.
10-James Wilson – Was found dead in May 1993 from an
apparent hanging suicide. He was reported to have ties to
Whitewater.
11-Kathy Ferguson- Ex-wife of Arkansas Trooper Danny
Ferguson, was found dead in May 1994, in her living room
with a gunshot to her head. It was ruled a suicide even
though there were several packed suitcases, as if she were
going somewhere. Danny Ferguson was a co-defendant along
with Bill Clinton in the Paula Jones lawsuit. Kathy Ferguson
was a possible corroborating witness for Paula Jones.
12-Bill Shelton – Arkansas State Trooper and fiancee of
Kathy Ferguson. Critical of the suicide ruling of his
fiancee, he was found dead in June, 1994 of a gunshot wound
also ruled a suicide at the grave site of his fiancee.
13-Gandy Baugh – Attorney for Clinton’s friend Dan Lassater,
died by jumping out a window of a tall building January,
1994. His client was a convicted drug distributor.
14-Florence Martin – Accountant &sub-contractor for the CIA
, was related to the Barry Seal Mena Airport drug smuggling
case. He died of three gunshot wounds.
15- Suzanne Coleman – Reportedly had an affair with Clinton
when he was Arkansas Attorney General. Died of a gunshot
wound to the back of the head, ruled a suicide. Was
pregnant at the time of her death.
16-Paula Grober – Clinton’s speech interpreter for the deaf
from 1978 until her death December 9, 1992. She died in a
one car accident.
17-Danny Casolaro – Investigative reporter. Investigating
Mena Airport and Arkansas Development Finance Authority. He
slit his wrists, apparently, in the middle of his
investigation.
18- Paul Wilcher – Attorney investigating corruption at Mena
Airport with Casolaro and the 1980 “October Surprise” was
found dead on a toilet June 22, 1993 in his Washington DC
apartment. Had delivered a report to Janet Reno 3 weeks
before his death.
19-Jon Parnell Walker – Whitewater investigator for
Resolution Trust Corp. Jumped to his death from his
Arlington, Virginia apartment balcony August15, 1993. He
was investigating the Morgan Guaranty scandal.
20-Barbara Wise – Commerce Department staffer. Worked
closely with Ron Brown and John Huang. Cause of death
unknown. Died November 29, 1996. Her bruised, nude body was
found locked in her office at the Department of Commerce.
21-Charles Meissner -Assistant Secretary of Commerce who
gave John Huang special security clearance, died shortly
thereafter in a small plane crash.
22-Dr. Stanley Heard – Chairman of the National Chiropractic
Health Care Advisory Committee died with his attorney Steve
Dickson in a small plane crash. Dr. Heard, in addition to
serving on Clinton’s advisory council, personally treated
Clinton’s mother, stepfather and brother.
23-Barry Seal -Drug running pilot out of Mena Arkansas,
death was no accident.
24-Johnny Lawhorn Jr. – Mechanic, found a check made out to
Bill Clinton in the trunk of a car left at his repair shop.
He was found dead after his car had hit a utility pole.
25-Stanley Huggins – Investigated Madison Guaranty. His
death was a purported suicide and his report was never
released.
26- Hershell Friday – Attorney and Clinton fund raiser died
March 1, 1994 w hen his plane exploded.
27-Kevin Ives &Don Henry – Known as “The boys on the track”
case. Reports say the boys may have stumbled upon the Mena
Arkansas airport drug operation. A controversial case, the
initial report of death said, due to falling asleep on
railroad tracks. Later reports claim the 2 boys had been
slain before being placed on the tracks. Many linked to the
case died before their testimony could come before a Grand
Jury.
THE FOLLOWING PERSONS HAD INFORMATION ON THE IVES/HENRY
CASE:
28-Keith Coney – Died when his motorcycle slammed into the
back of a truck, 7/88.
29-Keith McMaskle – Died stabbed 113 times, Nov, 1988.
30-Gregory Collins – Died from a gunshot wound January 1989.
31-Jeff Rhodes – He was shot, mutilated and found burned in
a trash dump in April 1989.
33-James Milan – Found decapitated. However, the Coroner
ruled his death was due to “natural causes”.
34-Jordan Kettleson – Was found shot to death in the front
seat of his pickup truck in June 1990.
35-Richard Winters – A suspect in the Ives / Henry deaths.
He was killed in a set-up robbery July 1989.
THE FOLLOWING CLINTON BODYGUARDS ARE DEAD:
36 -Major William S. Barkley Jr.
37-Captain Scott J . Reynolds
38-Sgt. Brian Hanley
39-Sgt. Tim Sabel
40-Major General William Robertson
41-Col. William Densberger
42-Col. Robert Kelly
43-Spec. Gary Rhodes
44-Steve Willis
45-Robert Williams
46-Conway LeBleu
47-Todd McKeehan
Quite an impressive list! Pass this on. Let the public
become aware of what happens to friends of the Clinton’s!
HILLARY FOR PRESIDENT? SURELY YOU JEST !!
Trillions Looted .... Looting of America 
The Government Perpetrated the Whole Mess ……. https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=Toxic+Zombie+Bank+Looting+Land+Swindles+
Frauds and Quackery Affecting the Older Citizen – U.S. Senate Special …
http://www.aging.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/publications/1161963.pdf
United States Senate
“Beware the Ranchero Racketeer,” by Paul Friggins, in the Reader’s. Digest … “I Dreamed I Retired on My 5-Acre Rancho,” by Norma Lee Brown- ing, in the …