On the Road

(The Press Release originally posted here will be reposted on Tuesday as a separate link.  There were conflicts with the Word and WordPress programs)

Dear Terry:

I just got a nice email from your former partner, Sam Ware, who wants to buy me a beer in Dallas.  I thought I would offer to buy you a beer in Jackson and we can settle this road thing in about an hour.

In spite of what you have heard about me, I am a reasonable person.  In fact, I’m the only reasonable person on Saddle Butte at this time.  As you know, I was the only one of 20 landowners to give you a piece of my property, absolutely free.  I did this because Matt Ostdiek told me I would get a better road.  Well, the road is a disaster and Matt Ostdiek is a goddam liar. 

In fact, you and I are on the same side of this issue.  We both got a bad road.  This is because Seaton Construction couldn’t follow plans, and Matt Ostdiek of Rendezvous Engineering designed a one lane road past my house to appease my pit-bull neighbors, the Fergusons, who have sued you for the past two years, and whose utility service boxes still sit 5 feet into your road easement.  Finally, your attorneys forgot to record my easement to you, which has now expired, limiting you to a one lane road to a multi-million dollar development.   If any of these people worked for me, I would fire them instantly. 

In short, you have to deal with me and you are lucky because I’m going to give you that easement back if we can agree on a few simple points: returning the road back into it’s original easement.  As I told Sam Ware, I have no problem with development, per se.,  only bad neighbors.   Looking forward to hearing from you. 

Doug Leen, 907.209.1691 or mail@dougleen.com

How would you like this right in front of your view?  Phase III kicked in today, Monday, with more signs, a visit to the local sheriff, newspapers, a land-use attorney and best of all–an 11 foot helium blimp.  It’s tethered on the top of my house and I’ve set it so it’s right in front of the Ferguson’s view.  The development in the distance is another example of ridgelining done by the Amangani corporation of Singapore.  Jackson Hole is being raped by developers–this view used to be Senator Hansen’s land; he gave it to his son who immediately sold it to the highest bidder–what do you expect?  I look at this every day–but then again, they look at us and my red blimp!!! 

The Fergusons spent two years and about $25,000 of our Association money sueing Amangani to limit the size of their outdoor lightbulbs; yes, lightbulbs!  Amangani’s attorney, Mike Hammer is no fan of my next door neighbor, and neither am I.  After all of Jean’s lawsuits, I managed to get these developers and several other owners of large properties (Mike Halpern, Mike Hammer to name a few) on the butte together to open their road to us so we could take our ugly road out. (the ugly road NW of the town of Jackson); only to have the Fergusons kill it.  You can google Saddle Butte or my name and find the public hearings.  On top of this, Jean Ferguson wanted to know what color of roof I was going to put on my house–well, now she’s got a red blimp! 

Here’s a close-up of it with the banner still attached.  It was too heavy making my precious blimp flounder, so I’ve pasted it up between two trees in front of their driveway.  I’m making lighter weight banners–perhaps a Ronald McDonald face and a couple of golden arches??  Any ideas, send me a suggestion below.  Here’s the banner:

“BAD FENCES MAKE BAD NEIGHBORS”  Kind of has a nice ring to it, huh?  See those boulders to the left?  Guess where they came from? 

From here.  These idiots from Seaton Construction dumped these four huge 3 foot diameter boulders right against my trees–and this was after I confronted them last season in the presence of the county sheriff.  I again called the sheriff and he’s going to try to get criminal charges filed.  So far we’ve lost about 39 trees although I’m losing count.  We found three more complete buried on Saturday.  Be sure to read the press release and initial excavation report below.;   Stay tuned….

What do you do when you return from Antarctica and find that someone has built a road across your property? 

Take a look here–the left arm of the yellow symbol is our property corner and the right one is where the road footing starts–a full 10 feet!  Plus the road was built 3 feet higher which necessitated a 60′ fill into my drive and the steepness increased from 10% grade to 20%.   We were denied access all winter which is bull***t!  And it gets better–my uphill neighbor with the steep poorly designed driveway (a park ranger buddy whom I introduced to Saddle Butte) engineered this by putting their electrical service box 7 feet into the easement forcing the road into my property.  The road engineer bought this tripe and built the road over my property instead.    And my neighbors being on the uphill side got the better deal and driveway–they signed no easement–why should they?  It’s easier to steal!  Who paid for this?  I did through my landowners dues of which THEY ARE THE PRESIDENT!!!  Well, here’s how Doug handles these situations:

I hire a couple of good old local boys who instantly understand the problem (there was no shortage of backhoe drivers willing to do this chore).  At 3am I had these two expert excavators ripping this road up so I could gain access to my property.  This was after seven months of letters and stonewalling from their lawyers.  Who are these people?  Big Texas Oil money?  No, it’s Ware and Worrell developers who are ridge-lining the summit of Saddle Butte in the south-center of Jackson Hole.  This is like fighting Haliburton (maybe it is??).  The county attorney, who visited the site last year just shook his head and repeated “unbelievable” over and over when his road specialist informed us that it is easier and therefore cheaper to dump the spoils downhill on road construction–that is…..my property. 

Well, I look at this as an opportunity.  This has been more fun than when my brothers and I blew the pitchers mound off the little league field with some purloined dynamite in the early 1960s.  (It was attributed in the newspapers to flying saucers).  Take a look at what two backhoes can do in just three hours–here it is 6am:

This is beautiful!  And since there is all this easement space on the other side of the road, well it’s a natural place to stuff all this dirt.  Can you imagine what idiots would design and dare to build a road like this? Answer:  Rendezvous Engineering and Seaton Construction of Jackson Hole, Wyoming.  A one lane road to a multi million dollar development—truely unbelievable!  

We removed approximately 200 cubic yards of earth that was illegially dumped on our property.  And after asking them to remove it last October, they dumped four additional large boulders up against some aspen trees as a retaining wall.  All in all, they killed or buried 39 trees–we discovered today three more buried stumps!  This is a treble damage state, I believe and at $2000 per tree X 3 X 39, this is amounting into a battleground for us.  But this is Jackson Hole, which has the highest per capita income in the United States, where billionaires are running out the millionaires and you can find a house with 27 fireplaces or a $10M spec house above my house.  Opps, without a road, it won’t be worth $10 million.  Now would you piss off the person who lived in front of your view?? 

I launch the helium blimp on Monday….stay tuned…..