The Pima County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday decided to pull a controversial development item from the agenda until a related legal challenge has resolved.
The county had sough to strip the development rights from Joseph Cesare‘s southwest-side residential subdivision known as Star Valley because of an ongoing dispute over obligations to pay for additional roadways.
Cesare filed two lawsuits against the county in Pima County Superior Court and another in federal court in 2014.
The lawsuit supervisors decided to allow to run its course contests obligations to pay for roads and other improvements in and around the neighborhood. The roads would alleviate congestion on Wade Road, the one road going into and out of the growing 2,000-home development.
“Clearly, it is the responsibility of the developer to provide significant offsite transportation improvements; particularly those improvements now being constructed by the County on behalf of the developer extending Camino Verde from the north side of Star Valley to Valencia Road,” County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry wrote in Jan. 16 memo to supervisors.
Had supervisors voted to strip the development plan, Cesare would have been forced to start anew the platting process, which determines where roads, infrastructure and houses would be built. The move would have essentially wiped away years of planning and work.
The county first approved Star Valley plans in 1987, although no building occurred there until the early 2000s.
Although the Star Valley development plan has been amended over the years, county officials say the requirements to pay for roadway construction and improvements date to the 1987 approval and were again confirmed in a 2002 financing plan.
In the August lawsuit, Cesare and Star Valley trustee Stewart Title and Trust of Tucson argue the developer never fully accepted what the county now insists are obligations to pay for road construction.
The lawsuit also says the developer has paid more than $5 million in impact fees to the county, which Cesare argues should be used to fund road construction.
The county approved a regime of impact fees in 1997, but the fees were not in effect in the Star Valley area until 2003.
Even so, Huckelberry wrote, the county never agreed to allow impact fee payments to serve as credit against the previously agreed to roadway improvements.
In fact, Huckelberry said the $5 million in impact fees already paid wouldn’t come close to covering the transportation needs county officials say the Star Valley development has created.
A 2002 traffic impact analysis said the overall costs of road widening and new construction would be as much as $27 million. Huckelberry wrote the costs more likely would top $40 million now, although the developer is not obligated to pay for all the needed work identified in the analysis.
But the county does want the Star Valley developer to pay some of those costs as agreed to in the original pans and later amendments.
Huckelberry noted the county has begun to extend Camino Verde north to Valencia and will expect Cesare to pay the $1.5 million costs. The county also has begun installation of a permanent traffic signal at the intersection, which it expects the developer to pay for as well.
The supervisors’ decision Tuesday allows the court process to unfold.
