Two brothers and their development company have filed a lawsuit against the City of Loveland and key members of the senior staff.
Former City of Loveland building officials have signed affidavits revealing what people have long suspected but couldn’t prove, that the development laws in Loveland only apply to some but not everyone.
The City Manager, Don Williams, and crew allowed multiple projects to begin without proper permits, gave verbal approval for some to ignore stop work orders (SWO) and generally ran the city development process in an arbitrary manner by rewarding friends and punishing critics.
The iniquities may now cost taxpayers millions as the Klen brothers seek restitution for the damages they claim the city cost their project after they spoke out against improper behavior by city officials. The claim is well founded. A simple permit to begin the foundation work dragged out over more than a year after staff lost the application, refused to process it and later, according to Klens, even perjured themselves by falsifying the application with fraudulent entries.
City Council member David Clark sailed through the approval process with a competitive commercial building project located close to the Klen’s project in east Loveland. Now Clark is contributing to the city’s direction to the outside counsel on the Klen’s case even though there appears to be a conflict of interest.
The depositions will begin soon and much more is likely to be revealed as the Klen’s attorney opens the door to much larger problems in the management of the City of Loveland.
All city employees who are concerned about the lawsuit should seek independent legal counsel. Using the city’s attorneys means your personal interests may take a back seat to the city manager’s objectives in defending himself. Cities often indemnify employees by paying their legal fees. A smart employee would seek their own independent legal counsel and ask for the city to pay their defense instead of relying on the attorney directed by the city manager to defend their interests. Too often, the interest of an individual employee who needs to be forthright in the legal process is incompatible with that of their supervisors causing a conflict of interest between the defendants.
In the end, the Mayor and City Council need to show leadership by cleaning-up the process and reforming Loveland’s development, building and planning processes. In the meantime, the Klens will likely have their day in court to prove their allegations.
Please feel free to post any comments or corrections to the story here.
See the story and court documents on LovelandPolitics
I read the filing. What a bunch of juveniles and their language is astonishing!
Where is the city council when Williams is running our city into the ground?
What you failed to notice however is that Williams and Duval depend on the more sophisticated developers like McWhinney to hold staff’s hand and teach them what they are supposed to do.
Competent people don’t normally remain in organizations being run in such an unprofessional manner.
Council elections are only 10 months away! We need to get people who can resolve these problems so there aren’t anymore more lawsuits. I was told the city already spent $100,000 defending Williams on this case alone. Is this true does anybody know?
My favorite part was Tom telling them “So I am an as*$#le hugh?”
Giving anyone a SWO while pouring conrete is typical of the childish and petter behavior of this city but it actually didn’t need to happen.
Ed just needed to keep his mouth buttoned and he wouldn’t have had any problems. They can be really helpful if you keep your opinions to yourself. The one inspector who came to my house was a nice guy but did tell me the city is really screwed-up.
“Ed just needed to keep his mouth buttoned” constitutes a threat against an individual. Using the Internet as the means to do so is a criminal offense. Specifically, a federal criminal offense.
Because the comments on this site are moderated that means the person or persons responsible for this site are guilty of aiding in criminal activity.
Perhaps the publishing of the aforementioned comment should be reconsidered.
We struggle to keep this forum as open as possible. Unless the comment came specifically from a city official (which it apparently did not) then any reasonable person would not interpret it to be a threat in anyway.
For a posting to rise to the level of being a “threat” it must call for a specific action that is threatening against an individual. See the recent federal court ruling in Roanoke, VA on this question.
Instead, the comment is the opinion of an individual that there is a relationship between presumably Ed Klen’s comments in the past (it only gave a first name) and the actions by the city regulators in the past. This is precisely what the Klens appear to be arguing in their civil action.
Again, it is an opinion regarding events described in the lawsuit and not that of anyone with authority or standing in the matter. Therefore, despite the allegation made by the previous post, we have decided to let the original comment stand as protected free speech.
For the record, no individual posting is edited for content. They are solely the opinions of those posting the comment and do not necessarily reflect the views of those sponsoring this free speech forum. Postings that violate the web host’s rules, appear to be libelous, inane or are completely off-topic (like a spam advertisement) are deleted when discovered.
If this article is true, or even the gist of it, the text should be part of a docket in a criminal complaint, not simply the random posting on a website. I hope it’s not – I really do – but I also hope the Klens will have the guts (& money) to carry their lawsuit to its conclusion. Either way, the truth needs to come out on this.
omg, i just think it’s awful, the whole thing is a scandal that somebody needs to take responsibility for. i really want to know why this hasn’t come out in the paper yet – IT’S AWFUL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It’s been awhile since I went to this site. I missed a lot!! How is it that our city council hasn’t addressed this? Who’s in charge these days? Don’t we still have a representative government? If this is all made up, the author should be ashamed. If it’s true, the city council should ask for the city manager’s resignation. They’re the ones that hire and fire top city officials, don’t they? While they’re at it, they might ask for the city attorney’s resignation, too.
What disgusting mouths our city officials have when they are behind closed doors or with people they think don’t care! I am appalled! There ought to be at least a small amount of dignity, professionalism, and decorum. They just sound like junior high school boys being dirty!
Are the Klens going to go all the way with this, let the truth come out? Will this website do a follow-up story? It is intriguing that the story is getting traction in the “non-traditional press”, while the Reporter Herald remains quiet on the issue. How can they be so dull? Small wonder they’re losing readers even as Loveland grows.
Thanks for breaking this story and continuing to tell some of the stories – the important ones – that so often are unreported elsewhere.
Maybe this should be shocking, but sorry to say this really doesn’t surprise me. Maybe I’ve become too jaded by watching this City gov’t in action. I’ve heard for years from Staffers who lament that they can’t do their jobs adequately or ethically… that some people get “special” treatment. Building Inspections are hit-n-miss, depending on the developer/builder.
Also, the CAB is rife with conflict of interest, as is the Planning Commission. Traditionally, their makeup is mostly from those in the biz. Like foxes appointed to oversee the chicken coop. Regardless of who sits in the City Manager’s office, though (and admittedly, Williams is terrible), this won’t change without a wholesale change of Council.
The McWhinney’s developer of the mall site (Poag and McWewen) was allowed to begin work without a permit. They were fully mobolized on the site building their foundations without a valid permit because they had not established a second means of access to the site, a basic health safety requirement in the case of an emergency. They were in the process of negotiating the access with the railroad but had not yet secured it and were well underway with construction of their foundations. This was absolutly a routine part of business at City Hall for the McWhinneys.