Yep - clickbait headline. I’d be against these as much as the next person, but the article itself said (after it’s clickbait headline) that the township settled. Lawsuits back and forth on both sides, but the township accepted a deal, so it wasn’t like everyone said “no” and then they went ahead and built anyway.
I mean, it’s shady for headlines, but it’s not false. The board are residents, and the did vote it down. Then they “settled” and I’m betting it was a pittance compared to the data center value. In reality, it was probably a situation where whomever was backing the data center said to throw lawyers and/or money at the problem until it went away.
This is literally then one case where the slowness of the courts could have worked for the people. Even if the town lost after years of litigation, so what. They would have moved it elsewhere in the meantime. But someone got bribed to drop the lawsuit.
It’s not free for a small town to litigate for years. The fact they settled so fast implies that the way they did it was not remotely legal. They may not have followed their own rules or state rules. Doing that is a good way to get a judge mad real fast. Judge could have put a preliminary injunction on the town to allow the construction to start while litigation proceeded. To do that the judge would have to determine that the developer was likely to succeed and that no irreparable harms would be caused. If the developers lost then they could just demo what had been built and restore the site, no harm done.
Another lying headline. You all will up vote anything that makes you mad without reading it or thinking critically at all.
Yep - clickbait headline. I’d be against these as much as the next person, but the article itself said (after it’s clickbait headline) that the township settled. Lawsuits back and forth on both sides, but the township accepted a deal, so it wasn’t like everyone said “no” and then they went ahead and built anyway.
I mean, it’s shady for headlines, but it’s not false. The board are residents, and the did vote it down. Then they “settled” and I’m betting it was a pittance compared to the data center value. In reality, it was probably a situation where whomever was backing the data center said to throw lawyers and/or money at the problem until it went away.
This is literally then one case where the slowness of the courts could have worked for the people. Even if the town lost after years of litigation, so what. They would have moved it elsewhere in the meantime. But someone got bribed to drop the lawsuit.
It’s not free for a small town to litigate for years. The fact they settled so fast implies that the way they did it was not remotely legal. They may not have followed their own rules or state rules. Doing that is a good way to get a judge mad real fast. Judge could have put a preliminary injunction on the town to allow the construction to start while litigation proceeded. To do that the judge would have to determine that the developer was likely to succeed and that no irreparable harms would be caused. If the developers lost then they could just demo what had been built and restore the site, no harm done.