(Ordinance hearing speech from 06-24-24 below, meeting comments in italics)
Who wrote this?
(Christopher LeClair credited himself. This law grants LeClair a great amount of authority over residents and influence over commissioners.)
Have you all read it? (Blank stares from commissioners.)
Please turn to Page 6, Subparagraph 76
"offer, sale, ore development" - is this referring to mining? There are multiple misspellings in this document, so I assumed it was just another misspelling.
Please turn to Page 9, Paragraph D, Transfer or Sale of Land
"No owner or agent of the owner shall transfer or sell any part of a lot or parcel of land"
Do you mean part of a lot or part of a parcel, or do you intend to control every sale of land?
If this is not a grammatical error, it disqualifies this document.
What becomes the most apparent to me, is the amount of authority given to the Administrative Officer, Mr. LeClair.
A subdivision pre-application meeting used to be optional, now it is required in Section 4.
That reminds me of Senator Harry Reid. Somehow, Harry Reid's family seemed to own many parcels of the land shortly prior to a highway passing through the area... and they weren't ranchers.
On top of having early information of property development, Mr. LeClair can get approval from the Planning Commission by not submitting objections to the development identified by the newly created Development Review Team.
Mr. LeClair would be a pretty good friend to have, if you can afford him.
There appears to be a soil testing requirement for septic installation on any subdivision, including fields or a lot purchased as an investment or hunting land.
(LeClair stated that a subdivision greater than 10 acres is exempt in Section 3, Subp. 3, but Subp. 3 goes on to eliminate the exemption for “non-conformity” or “increased land use intensity”, both purely subjective. There is no exemption.)
The previous law was 6,530 words. This new law is 16,942 words. Nearly triple in size.
I did random text searches on sentences in this new law, and I found them in ordinances primarily on the East Coast. This does not appear to be an organic document. Was an ordinance from an entity outside Otter Tail County used as an outline? (LeClair stated it was copied from Douglas County.)
LeClair claims to have spent 4 years writing this ordinance, and collaborated with county attorneys. This statute is so poorly written that those involved do not appear to be qualified to participate in authoring law (and should repeat high school grammar).
Mike Van Horn
vhorn@hotmail.com
Video of the Subdivision Ordinance meeting.
I begin speaking at 37:02. The video confirms that Kurt Mortenson was notified that there were spelling and grammatical errors with the ordinance prior to his vote to pass it. Kurt Mortenson is the Chairman.
Otter Tail County Commissioners Tormenting Citizens 