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Girard Park residents hoping to preserve the residential integrity of their neighborhood |
Chief among the issues will be the waivers themselves. “They don’t have everything they say they have in the way of [cancellations],” says attorney Gary McGoffin, who represents the opposing residents (and, full disclosure, is IND Monthly’s legal counsel). Davidson, who owns 4 acres at Girard Park and Hospital drives, has been battling his neighbors in this quaint slice of Lafayette for more than a decade, gathering waivers from them since 1995 in an attempt to have the court declare null and void a 1940 covenant that restricts much of the property along Girard Park drive to single-family dwellings and apartments. He needs cancellation agreements from more than half of the land area affected by the covenant, also known as Act 153556. What should be included in the calculation is all of the property south and west of Girard Park Circle and Girard Park Drive and the portion of that property east of and abutting Girard Park Drive for a depth of 300 feet. The weight of each vote is determined by the square footage of land area within each property owner’s lot. 
In building his case, Davidson uses at least 10 waivers signed by people who no longer own the property encumbered by the covenant, according to McGoffin, who believes Davidson needs new waivers from current land owners. “Simply put, this is an election which requires a majority vote,” McGoffin writes in his opposition to summary judgment. “The voters are the owners of the land on the date of the election.” Under Davidson’s theory, McGoffin argues that these 10 landowners would be disenfranchised from the right to vote on the character of their neighborhood.
Additionally, some of those who signed waivers have revoked them, and for unknown reasons Davidson decided to exclude six lots owned by the Verlanders (across from Davidson’s home and located at the corner of Girard Park Drive and Girard Park Circle) in his computations; the plaintiff is likely to argue that their non-conforming use — they run a bed and breakfast on the property — should exempt them. And then there is the murky matter of the city-owned former planetarium building and Heymann Memorial Park property. Davidson claims that the city’s intervention in his suit was an agreement to waive the covenant restrictions, but no such waiver — which would likely require council approval — has been signed.
The defendants in the case hired engineer/land surveyor Al Reaux to analyze the property; his assessment was based on records from the Lafayette Parish tax assessor's office.
Davidson and his attorney have declined comment on the case.
For more on this issue, read the IND’s February cover story, “Don’t Back Down,” here.
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MAY 24 Jarvis DeBerry posts here about the redonkulus rhetoric that would have us believe NOLA is a safe city with a murder problem. Maybe the city's crime stats don't compare with its murder stats because you can't manipulate a murder, he says: a dead body's a dead body. It just doesn't make sense, he says, and his readers agree: a poll asks if they believe the city is safe, and more than 90 percent say no.
MAY 24 Jindal administration officials announced Thursday that the privatization of public health care is going to cost a lot more than they budgeted for, the Advocate reports here. "I'm so surprised," said no one. Anywhere. The cost they're projecting now is more than $1 billion - a lot more than the $626 million budgeted for it. And, it's more than it cost the state to operate those hospitals. So why are we doing this again?
MAY 24 Blogger CB Forgotston ridicules the recent PR campaign by the state GOP in the wake of a legislative auditor's request to both major parties. The GOP (apparently unaware that the Dems got the same request) started yammering about being targeted because it had "killed" a tax increase. CB finds that laughable, but it's also pretty funny that the GOP was comparing this episode to the IRS scandal (Because the President has so much to do with our state auditor. Right?).
MAY 24 Politico details some recent fund-raising efforts by Sen. David Vitter, which have raised the question of his future political plans. This time, it is a $5,000 per head "bayou weekend" that includes "Cajun cooking" and an all-caps "alligator hunt," the story reports. Funds raised go to a super PAC that can spend money to support Vitter in federal or state races, the story points out.
MAY 24 The pink building on Royal in the quarter was sold at a sheriff's sale Thursday, this Picayune story reports. An injunction that would have halted the sale wasn't enforced because the family failed to post a $150,000 bond, the story reports. So the owner of the mortgages on the building bought it, for nearly $7 million. Now the feuding family will have to negotiate with that company to get a lease on the building that has housed their business for close to 60 years.
MAY 23 This post in Louisiana Voice tells us about a bill by a Winnsboro lege that would require all public high school students to take at least one Course Choice online class in order to graduate. (What?) Blogger Tom Aswell says it's a monument to "waste and corruption," especially in light of the problems he's exposed with the program in recent weeks. Idaho had a similar program, but voters removed it by a 2-1 margin, Aswell says.
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