“The Court accepts as true all material allegations of the Complaint and construes the Complaint in favor of the complaining party…” (Save Our Necks). “The action of the County is essentially the appointment by the Board of the Planning Commission pursuant to Code §15.2-2212. Such appointments are made…according to such statute.”

In a few words Circuit Court Judge Glen Tyler has acknowledged and affirmed that Save Our Necks was correct from the beginning. He has affirmed that our allegations were factual and that we brought the action under the correct law. In short, he says, we are right!

He then dismissed the suit.

We have made our point. There is no reason to continue spending our money fighting this or letting the County waste the taxpayer’s money by duking it out over nit-picky subtleties of the law when the real issue will never come forward. Make no mistake: SONs believes that the Board and the County Administration bear the sole responsibility for wasting taxpayer’s money over a lawsuit that did not ever have to happen.

In what appears to be the final chapter of SON’s lawsuit against the County, we have been ejected from his court because we lack “standing.” This is a funny conclusion from a judge who previously listened to several motions and rendered previous opinions on this case. Apparently we had sufficient “standing” then. County Attorney Tommy Dix never vocalized a word about our “standing.” But now, alas, we have no “standing.”

Tyler ignored significant case law, cited by SONs, in our previous pleadings. The 2001 Goldman case specifically addresses the matter of “standing” for citizens and taxpayer groups. We have no idea why Tyler disregarded this case because there are no fewer than five circumstances in which the issue of “standing” is positively addressed and affirmatively held in favor of citizens and taxpayers.

The Appeals Court said: “For purposes of this standing inquiry, we treat the words ‘citizen’ and ‘taxpayer’ as being synonymous.”

Speaking about the specific rights of citizens in bringing actions against a local governing authority, the Appeals Court goes on to say:

“… although the citizen did not have a special or pecuniary interest in the outcome, he nonetheless had the right to seek enforcement of a ministerial duty imposed by statute. This holding is consistent with law permitting challenges to actions taken by local government because the interest of a citizen in matters of local government is direct and immediate.” 552 S.E 2d 67, 262 Va. 364.

In spite of the fact that Tyler will not hear any more from us, we are satisfied with his acknowledgement that we were right in every way. Because of our lawsuit and recent election changes, we have observed that the legal behavior of the Board has improved. We welcome this change. The burden is now on this same Board to act appropriately from now on.