Orem City Solar Panel Permits--Draft Letter-2

Orem City Solar Panel Permits--Draft Letter-2

Dear Neighbors and Friends,

Over the past five years, the City of Orem has caused a lot of people a lot of trouble through its permit office, and I am trying to get it fixed. I am mostly talking about the refusal of the city to let people install solar panels on their homes. However, the determination by the city that you could not have a solar panel building permit, also means that you cannot get ANY kind of a new permit for your home or property, whether to make some kind of a change in structure or use -- to start using a basement apartment, or add a wheelchair ramp, etc., etc. The house is frozen for eternity. There can be no change in use or change in structure forever until this problem is fixed.

If you are a person who might sell the house (and so would need to disclose any known problems) or if you are a person has who has recently bought the house (without being told about the problems), then all of this is extra important. The City does these things without any consideration of real estate transactions, and never gives any notice to anyone. They just spring this on people at the time someone might ask for a permit, usually after it is too late to do anything much about it.

It is the house that is frozen, and cannot get a permit of any kind, not you personally. Although, this is actually a criminal matter, and, theoretically, according to the city regulations, they could throw you in jail for years and charge you millions of dollars in fines for having what they claim is some kind of zoning violation. This is all legal insanity, but that is where the city is right now. Two different people threatened me with being criminally prosecuted when I was complaining about my situation, so this is not theoretical, really, even though I don't think they would dare actually do it. But they certainly don't mind harassing people with such things.

Here's my plan at the moment. You might consider whether you want to join in or not. First, before we even get to the solar panel permit, we should notice that at least some people in Orem have title insurance which promises either to fix the legal problem for you or to pay you $25,000, or do something else. About 250 people have had their solar panel permit denied. Some of those people, like myself, have title insurance which supposedly will either help fix the problem or reimburse them for whatever happens. I have been partly through this once, so I could help you figure out what your situation is.

Assuming you want to be part of this very loosely organized cooperative effort, the first step is to find out who has this kind of title insurance, and get some informal claim or formal lawsuit going against these insurance companies. There are 13 title insurance companies operating in Utah, and they have a large number of title insurance policies they give out, so we would need to check each policy individually to see if this title insurance option might work for you. That might provide a solution  to the permit problem or provide some money to help provide a solution.

This is a little bit complicated, but I am happy to take care of some of this behind-the-scenes research and  organization, and I expect to get a local law firm to help me.

After we check out the title insurance option, we can move on to dealing with the city concerning permits, assuming that the title insurance companies won't know how to do this. I think I have already proven that the title insurance companies don't know how to do this, so we need to have a plan for taking this next step. I've spent an entire year studying this problem, and I think I know what the possible solutions are, even though I haven't actually solved any specific problem yet, for myself or for anyone else.

If you will tell me something about your situation and your interests, maybe we can work out some way to help solve your problem. I went to law school, but I never practiced law, so I know some theory, but I don't know how to actually deal with the judges and clerks. That is where I need some extra legal help.