A lawsuit to stop the development of a Dollar General store in Redwood Valley was roundly rejected Jan. 11 by Mendocino Superior Court Judge Richard Henderson, ending a last-ditch effort to halt construction of the 9,100-square-foot chain store in the unincorporated rural community.
Some residents of Redwood Valley have been fighting the construction of the store since it was approved by the county in 2015, saying it would spoil the rural character of their town. Judge Henderson’s ruling swept aside all challenges to the legality of the store’s construction, but the substance of the petitioners’ grievances will continue to shape a still-developing ordinance meant to govern the construction of chain stores in rural parts of the county.
Alex and Anthony Chehada, the owners of Redwood Valley Market, filed a petition with the court in January last year to compel the county to conduct an environmental assessment of the proposed store, which the Planning and Building Department had determined to be unnecessary when they granted a permit on June 6, 2015. The Chehadas and other Redwood Valley residents had earlier challenged the permit with an administrative appeal to the Mendocino County Planning Commission and then to the Board of Supervisors, but both bodies upheld planning staff’s determination that the project complied with county zoning and was exempt from state-mandated environmental review.
The Chehadas filed suit against the developer, Cross Development, in a bid to compel the county to set aside its “ministerial,” or automatic, approval of the permit and conduct an environmental assessment that would gauge the project’s impact on the surrounding community.
At the hearing held on Dec. 8, the Chehadas’ most important task was to prove that they were even entitled to challenge the project in the first place.
A 35-day statute of limitations, effective upon issuance of the permit, presumably rendered the substance of the petition moot, but Brian Momsen, the Chehadas’ attorney, argued that the deadline did not apply since, they argued, the county clerk-recorder did not properly advise the public of the project’s exemption from environmental review, which by state law must be posted for 30 days. Momsen took issue with a stamped date range at the bottom of the notice, written “POSTED FROM 11/9/15 TO 12/9/15,” which, he argued, implicitly excluded the final day and therefore fell short of the mandatory notice period.
In his tentative ruling, Judge Henderson dismissed that argument as a “contortion of common sense.” Since the petitioners’ arguments were effectively void under the statute of limitations, Henderson noted that he did not have to rebut the substantive claims, but he did so anyway out of “an abundance of caution.”
Petitioners pointed out that not all permits were issued on a ministerial basis, but Henderson countered that they were presumed to be so unless other factors put them under a governing agency’s discretionary purview. Language found in the county’s zoning laws, which Momsen argued gave the Board of Supervisors discretionary authority to review the project, were irrelevant to the issuing of permits, Henderson wrote.
Finally, the size of the project did not alter its presumptive exemption under California Environmental Quality Act, Henderson wrote. A controlling precedent from the 3rd District Court of Appeal, from a case in which the City of Glendale approved a grading permit for a project requiring the importing and removal of almost 2 million cubic yards of earth in total, did not apply to the construction of a Dollar General store, he wrote.
Redwood Valley resident Cassie Taaning-Trotter, who helped start a Facebook page opposing the project, said she was disappointed by the decision but was looking forward to future community efforts to restrict chain-store development in rural communities. The Board of Supervisors passed a moratorium on so-called formula businesses–stores with a standardized architecture, graphic design, and inventory–during the Dollar General controversy in 2015, and the Planning Commission late last year approved a draft version of an ordinance that would restrict such businesses.
Residents of Redwood Valley, Potter Valley, and other rural communities have created citizen councils, called municipal advisory committees, which will advise the county on the provisions of the final ordinance. Taaning-Trotter sits on Redwood Valley’s MAC.
“I’m happy that the county is listening to rural communities and using their input to develop new ordinances,” said Taaning-Trotter.
“I hope in the future we’ll be better with everyone with their eyes open, doing some proactive planning for what’s best for our communities,” she added.
