Lawsuit over coastal annexation dropped Lawsuit over coastal annexation dropped (November 03, 2004)

The lawsuit that delayed annexation of 220 square miles of the San Mateo County Coastside to the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District for two months is history.

In a letter dated October 7, attorneys for Oscar Braun, who brought suit in June against the county's Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCo) to block the expansion, offered to dismiss the entire lawsuit, according to LAFCo attorney Carol Woodward.

Ms. Woodward said the offer stipulated that no money would change hands and there would be no demands for rescinding the annexation or for payment of attorney's fees. In addition, Ms. Woodward said, Mr. Braun's attorneys stated they "are no longer inclined to file a validation action challenging LAFCo's approval of the MROSD's annexation application."

In a special meeting October 21, the LAFCo board approved the offer to dismiss the lawsuit.

This action should conclude a six-year process for expanding MROSD to include the Coastside so it could buy and manage land for open space and low-intensity recreation.

During this period, Mr. Braun and the Half Moon Bay Coastside Foundation and others have brought several unsuccessful suits to block the annexation.

Filed in early June, the latest suit challenged the official count of protests collected in May and sought an election in the area to be annexed even though there were not enough valid signatures to trigger an election under the law. The court spent most of the summer reviewing petitions.

After recounting the disputed petitions himself, Judge Carl Holm ruled on September 2 that the petitions did not meet the threshold of 25 percent of registered voters needed for an election. Several hundred petitions were duplicates, or signed by people who lived outside of the district or were not registered.

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