Corrections requested: I am using real names for accountability and trying to carefully distinguish between what is based directly on verifiable facts and what is only consistent with verifiable facts. Please contact me if this presentation can be made more accurate.
I first became concerned about bribery and blackmail of judges when I lived in Steamboat Springs CO. There I became involved in a land and building regulation dispute with my next-door neighbor the President of the City Council Kevin Bennett. The fact that this was a land and building dispute as opposed to a divorce or custody dispute was significant because there is essentially no dispute about what was said or remembered.
When I was actively involved in the land and building dispute with Kevin Bennett multiple parties informed me that he was or had been a drug dealer. I reported that to the police and offered to tell them more details if they contacted me but the police did not respond to my offer of information regarding drug dealing. I reported to a city council member that I had been informed that the city council president was a convicted drug dealer. He checked with the police and informed me that they assured him that Kevin Bennett was not a convicted drug dealer. However, Kevin Bennett recently publicly disclosed that: " he was convicted of conspiracy to sell hash and that he pleaded guilty. Bennett said he was in his mid-20s, broke and thought he could make some money when he offered up his truck to transport the hash. He spent five months in prison and paid a $2,500 fine."
http://www.exploresteamboat.com/news/2009/sep/30/candidates_divided_financing_issue/
Like many resort areas, Steamboat Springs was a high drug use locality and the DEA designated it as such. The newspaper The Steamboat Pilot published details of police contacts and these showed that most drug arrests were of low-income people even though it was common knowledge that high-income people were also using illegal drugs. I "heard" from a former police officer that the police department was selling drug evidence. I "confirmed" that with a local lawyer who told me she had "heard" the same thing. I "heard" from a local man who had applied for a job with the Steamboat Police, who were constantly claiming to be short staffed due to inadequate pay, that they refused to consider him despite his police academy training because he had told them that they would never make progress against local drug use unless they "cleaned up their act" and that he had informed them that he had witnessed police drug use. I also "heard" from a police academy graduate that a fellow graduate was briefly employed by the Steamboat police but quit because the department was "dirty". This is consistent with this 1998 US Government report "Drug Related Police Corruption" http://www.gao.gov/products/GGD-98-111 which found "in addition to protecting criminals or ignoring their activities, officers involved in drug-related corruption were more likely to be actively involved in the commission of a variety of crimes, including stealing drugs and money from drug dealers, selling drugs, and lying under oath about illegal searches" and "one commonly identified factor associated with drug-related corruption was a police culture that was characterized by a code of silence, unquestioned loyalty to other officers, and cynicism about the criminal justice system".
In the 1950's, Routt County was one of the poorest counties in Colorado. However, after the ski resort became established it followed Vail and Aspen as a second home location and real estate values soared. This left many opportunities for local government corruption. In 2008, the Steamboat Pilot published “Skunks about in Citizen’s Hall” “for the past 10 years, Assistant Finance Director Bob Litzau ….said “I have been trying to implement a system of auditing use-tax deposits for 10 years…. Tens of millions of tax dollars have gone uncollected by the city…because past finance directors and city managers…. intentionally decided not to assist Mr. Litzau when he sought their help in enforcing the law.” http://www.steamboatpilot.com/news/2008/sep/19/rob_douglas_skunks_abound_citizens_hall/
In June 09, a David Engle died in a fire 6 block from Bennett’s home. His home was listed on the property tax rolls as a one-car garage. “Bob Keenan, senior planner for the Planning Department, said they had no records of a secondary unit on the lot and that the address of 705 Pine St. was never issued.” “Kerrigan [county assessor] also said that although there are many illegal buildings in Steamboat, enforcement of the regulations is lax.” http://www.steamboatpilot.com/news/2008/jun/17/fire_death_questions_linger/
Because Engle's home was painted purple and had a front porch with a grill and was in the down town area near the county building department, I think that it was impossible that government authorities didn't know that it was there. Just a glance shows that because it was a former one-car garage it had only one exit and therefore violated the building safety codes. The city claims that it didn't have enough staff and money to monitor secondary units. I don't believe that because even though the population of Steamboat Springs is only about 9,000 people, it had 12 employees in the planning department in addition to the county planners and the building department. Good jobs in Steamboat are hard to get and whenever there was an opening it would be flooded with applications from all over the country. Many local doctors were graduates of Harvard and Yale. Steamboat Springs had a lot of turn over in its city manager position and when it was advertised received many applications. Yet it is apparently paying its current city manager around $175,000 per annum plus a very attractive pension immediately vested. I think the reason Steamboat pays so much to its city manager is to get someone who will be quiet about government corruption. Despite the fact that whenever they advertised the job they got over 100 applicants, the City paid a head hunter to fill the current city manager position. http://www.peckhamandmckenney.com/placements.htm http://www.steamboatpilot.com/news/2008/nov/30/our_view_take_part_manager_search/ I believe this allowed the "citizens search committee", selected by the city council, to screen for characteristics they couldn't state publicly and to offer the public choices among candidates pre selected to ignore government corruption.
Although city council jobs pay about $7,000 per annum the elected positions are so desirable that candidates spend more than the job pays to campaign and one member even rented an apartment to meet the residency requirements. Why is this?
http://www.steamboatpilot.com/news/2006/aug/17/kaminski_moving_out_of_district/
Why does the city claim it "the current [73 foot] height limitation artificially was set 'artificially low' with the expectation that developers would [build and then tear down and replace with] taller buildings if it wasn't fishing for payoffs? http://www.steamboatpilot.com/news/2009/feb/19/councils_thunderhead_vote_confuses/
My personal opinion is that Anthony Lettunich, who has been the city attorney for Steamboat Springs CO for over 25 years, probably funnels bribes to the city council and other city officials. I cannot prove this. However, to me it is shocking that while the very small city employees multiple attorneys full time, it employs its city attorney only part time and allows him to maintain a private practice in a private office with absolutely no restrictions about whom he accepts money from or for what and no reporting about his private practice to the city. http://www.sangres.com/colorado/routt/legal.htm When I last inquired they don't even have a contract with Anthony Lettunich. Because of the boom in real estate development and the way it wrote its regulations, the city was constantly fielding requests for zoning changes and it also subsidizes the local tourism industry. I suspect (but cannot prove) that when someone in the know wants something from the city such as a 35-foot set back variance (Grand Summit) or to evade collection of the tens of millions of unaudited developers taxes, I suspect they simply pay off Lettunich. Despite the revolving door for city managers, the same assistant city attorney, Dan Foote, the same assistant city manager, Wendy DuBord, and the same county attorney John Merrill have been in position for decades. Lettunich was formerly municipal judge and also was a partner at Hall & Evans 30 years ago. Hall & Evans represents the City of Steamboat Springs whenever it is sued and the city also pays Lettunich apparently every time it is sued. No clean brooms wanted! Anthony Lettunich advised the city council to communicate with him thru their personal email accounts, not the city emails, to avoid open records requests.
http://www.steamboatpilot.com/news/2008/oct/26/city_councils_email_ethics_vague/
http://www.steamboatpilot.com/news/2000/jun/15/citys_legal_costs/ http://www.steamboatpilot.com/news/2003/jan/08/former_councilman_drops/
http://www.steamboatpilot.com/news/2007/nov/09/council_mulls_iron_horse/
http://www.steamboatpilot.com/news/2000/may/30/trial_begins_over/
http://www.steamboatpilot.com/news/2000/oct/31/steamboat_plaintiffs_feds/
http://www.steamboatpilot.com/news/2008/mar/23/councils_harwigs_habit/
I became involved in this when I owned the property on the corner of Princeton and Pahwintah known as 750 Princeton. This property is currently owned by the current Steamboat City Council President Cari Hermacinksi, an attorney. I bought the house and 3/4 acre in 1991 for $289,000. Hermacinski recently remodeled it and tried to sell the house with half the land for almost $2 million.
Princeton Ave. is a short dead end street with only four houses. Kevin Bennett bought the house at the end of the street in 1983. It is listed on the property tax rolls as being built in 1950 and having 2,343 square feet of total building area. Anyone can stand on the street and see that there are four buildings there and there was extensive publicity when he built his two extra buildings in 2000 and expanded and converted an old unregistered shed five feet from the front property line to a "guest house". Just one of the buildings he added in 2000 is listed in the electrician's permit as being 2009 square feet but the property tax rolls show that the only building(s) was built in 1950. See
http://pioneer.co.routt.co.us/asp/assessor/parcel.asp?PIN=222800001
At the time these buildings were built I heard that Kevin Bennett's plan was to create a "bring your horse" bed and breakfast on his low density residential zoned property and charge big bucks for tourists to use his property as a base to ride their horses thru downtown Steamboat to Emerald Mountain. This was consistent with the fact that in 2001 the City paid $400,000 to a "consultant" to modify the "community development code" ordinances to allow creation of "planned unit developments" in any location of any size that offered an unique facility to tourists -- i.e. spot zoning. From 1985 to 1996 the city never knowingly allowed "nightly rentals" of homes in residential neighborhoods but under Kevin Bennett's leadership it suddenly decided that it was legal to convert your home to a hotel and bring strangers into residential neighborhoods. http://www.steamboatpilot.com/news/2001/apr/02/officials_say_rules/ At the same time official policy was that only homes approved by the city council, with no published criteria, could operate as "bed and breakfasts" renting bedrooms for $50 a night.
I repeatedly informed the county assessor, the county board, and the city council that Kevin and Jane Bennetts' buildings are not on the property tax rolls, 9 years after their construction, but they still were not added to the property tax rolls despite the fact that the county is in such poor financial shape that it had to impose salary cuts. I also informed Cari Hermacinski who can see all of Bennett's buildings from her hot tub but she chose to allow the situation of the invisible buildings to continue. Even though Bennett recently ran for reelection there was no public recognition of his invisible buildings. The Steamboat Pilot screens all "bloggers" and only allows approved bloggers to post on its web site. The only reason that I know of why both the city and the county would ignore buildings that violate the zoning and are not on the property tax rolls is to avoid an expose of government corruption.
We had a long running dispute with the Bennetts related to the end of Princeton Ave., which was not a cul-de-sac and offered no place for vehicles to turn around despite the fact that that was legally required. Princeton Ave was only twenty-two feet wide and it was impossible to make a U Turn without leaving the pavement. In the winter months, 99.9% of all vehicles entering Princeton Ave used our driveway to turn around in frequently waking us up and endangering our small children. These included drunk tourists looking for the hot springs and many many guests of the Bennetts' who at the time used their home for city government meetings and had many parties. The city had the land to install a public turn around but although I requested it, the City refused to do so. In 1992, Kevin and Jane Bennett installed a fence 60 feet from their property on our side of the street so they could use the end of Princeton Ave as a private parking area because their drive was at that time unpaved and very steep. They essentially converted 6,000 square feet of public land to their private use. I was threatened for going into that area and the police came to stop my 9-year-old son from going there even though it was public land. Kevin Bennett informed "anyone who would listen" that I was "mentally ill" and we were having a "feud" to justify his conversion of the street. I attempted to help the situation by tearing out my old circular driveway and installing a new driveway on Pahwintah after converting my garage so that the entrance faced the other street. This left drivers with no place to turn around at all so they backed down the street into the blind intersection up the hill from the grade school. To compensate for that I cleared a new driveway past my house closer to Bennetts' going to a space in my extra building lot that would park two vehicles. Some of Bennetts' multiple guests parked on my land, which I found annoying. I attempted to stop this by putting flowers and special trees on both sides of the second drive so that it would look like a private drive and be consistent with the materials I had used in landscaping the rest of my property. I tried to berm up the area between our home and Bennetts and plant bushes away from the street and flowers near the street. Bennetts didn't like this because they and their guests routinely parked off the pavement on the vegetation in front of my home. (There were no curbs or sidewalks). Bennetts' guests were uncomfortable parking on flowers although Bennett went out of his way to park his truck on my flowers and sometimes in the entrance to my drive. Bennett claimed that the vegetation owned by the city adjoining the pavement was designed for public parking although there was no designation anywhere supporting that and the city did not mow or otherwise maintain these areas. Other property owners landscaped them and installed sprinkler systems with the understanding that they couldn't complain about snow plow damage.
At this time Bennett was President of the City Council, a job that he claimed he did "full-time" even though it paid only $10,000 per year. In accordance with its pattern of hiring puppets as city managers, the City had hired a man close to retirement age, Paul Hughes, as city manager and paid him very highly compared to other professional positions in the area. Hughes was making almost twice as much as the local judges. http://www.steamboatpilot.com/news/2006/apr/19/former_manager_seeks/ Hughes sent a letter saying that I was required to have a "gardening permit" and that I had to get his permission to plant flowers. In the entire history of Steamboat they had never required anyone other than myself to have a gardening permit. The only regulation that Steamboat published about gardening or landscaping in the publicly owned strips of land adjoining the streets was to keep rocks and timbers away from the snowplows, which I was totally compliant with. When I suggested that there could be public guidelines about the height of landscaping on corners they were not at all interested. They wanted to regulate me and only me and the only reason was to allow Bennetts and their guests to park off the street in front of our home. Because there was a lot of snow, overnight on street parking was absolutely prohibited except for Bennetts', where the city allowed him to continue to use public land for his fence, doghouse, wood storage and 365 day 24 hour private parking.
The end of Princeton Ave was flanked by old golden willow trees, which would grow in Steamboat if you just stuck a branch into the ground. These Golden Willows were all over "old town" and all the residents and public utilities were constantly trimming them because they dropped branches in storms. I told my landscaping guy to trim some small branches that were hanging almost to the ground so that we could plant flowers there, so that the second driveway would appear to be mine as it was, so that Bennetts' guests wouldn't drive into it and park on my land. The very same week Bennett hired a contractor to trim the very same tree and five or seven other golden willow trees also planted on public land adjoining the street and my photos show that the branches Bennetts' contractor cut were six or eight inches in diameter whereas the ones my guy cut were at maximum three inches in diameter. Despite Bennetts' trimming, and despite the fact that the city had no trimming guidelines and didn't issue trimming permits to anyone, the police came and informed me that the city manager had sent them to tell me that I was to be prosecuted in municipal court for "unauthorized trimming". I was then told my two attorneys working for the City that if I didn't come to an agreement acceptable to Kevin Bennett I would be jailed for up to 18 months. The municipal court judge was on the city payroll and served at the discretion of the city council. My husband complained to the police that this was criminal extortion and they wrote that they contacted the district attorney and he said it was a "civil matter". We gave in and agreed to let Bennett convert the entire end of Princeton Ave to private property. We theoretically got a small piece of land that adjoined our property but we were required to sell land to Bennetts for $1. This was called a “mediated agreement” and the city paid $4,000 for a lawyer to implement it. She informed us that if we did not sign the contract with the City and the Bennetts that the pending criminal prosecution for "unauthorized trimming" of the small branches hanging from the tree by my drive in municipal court without a jury would continue.
After getting possession of the land at the end of Princeton Ave. by extorting me to give up my rights to the street and street access by threatening me with prosecution in municipal court and jail for "unauthorized trimming", Bennetts built the extra buildings on it including a two car garage with a "reception area" and "office" and heating and plumbing and a full second floor and they converted the shed to a "guest house" and built a "tack house", apparently in anticipation of the planned bring your horse bed and breakfast. This would have substantially impacted my property. I heard the plan was to instruct guests to ride their horses over the vegetation between my house and the street. The two-story building was only ten feet from my property and the guesthouse only 5 feet from the front set back line. I reviewed the city code and discovered multiple ways that these buildings violated the ordinances for low density residential zones, which allowed only one residential building per parcel, not three, only one sewer attachment, and required off street parking for all residences, prohibited garage apartments, and required that driveways have at least a 60 degree angle to the street, not the street extension that Bennetts' built. I even wrote to the city and asked if I could build an accessory building similar to Bennetts' on my adjoining property and was told that I could not. I went to the planning department to complain about Bennetts' construction, which was just beginning at the time, and the city planning services director Wendy Schulenburg, AKA Wendie Roonie, told me that she "interpreted" the city code to allow Bennetts' construction. I then sent emails to the city council quoting the city code and dropped off photos of his replacing the foundation of the non conforming shed to convert it to a free standing residence. But the city continued to deny that Kevin Bennett was a drug dealer and claimed that Bennetts' extra buildings (still not on the property tax rolls in 2009 nine years after construction) fully conformed with the zoning.
My next entry will be my first experience with Routt County court followed by my experiences with former federal judge "Naughty" Nottingham and my opinions about pro se litigation and regulation of the attorney services industry. In the meantime, if you have any questions or dispute the accuracy of this content please contact me or post any rebuttals. My hope is that my experiences will be useful for reform and that even though the original facts were local, the fact that my story is so verifiable will be significant.
