Justice denied: Court sides with small Kansas town’s good old boy network | Opinion

If you’re looking for justice in St. John, Kansas, you’re looking in the wrong place.

Dorothy Tobe and Mike Rosseau have been doing it for the past year, after buying an abandoned church building and trying to make it into a home.

While ordinary townspeople have been welcoming, the couple has been blocked at every turn by a small-town, good-old-boy network that controls city government for the benefit of the few.

Now, Tobe and Rosseau have just learned that a local judge has rejected their appeal of a City Council decision that denied them a permit to live in their building.

District Judge Carey Hipp found that the couple had not proven that the decision to deny their permit was “unreasonable.”

“A city has the discretion to decide what is in the best interest of its citizens,” Hipp wrote. “As long as the decision is reasonable, it shall not be disturbed. A district court shall not substitute its judgment for that of the City unless clearly compelled to do so. This Court is not compelled to do so.”

If what’s happened to Tobe and Rosseau since they got to St. John isn’t unreasonable, it’s hard to imagine what would be.

Tobe and Rosseau were pushed out of Colorado when the house they rented for 30 years was bought as a tear-down by a developer building high-end apartments to serve Denver’s overheated real estate market. They spent basically their life savings on the St. John church building because it was the best they could afford.

Their building sits at the edge of the city-designated “Downtown Commercial District,” a ragtag collection of small businesses and shuttered storefronts being used by their owners for personal storage.

When they first started to move in a year ago, the city filed criminal charges accusing them of violating the zoning code. It had never been enforced against anyone before, although there are probably more code violations than there are people in St. John. Eventually, the charges were dropped without explanation (St. John city government isn’t big on explaining itself).

The city code was just a smokescreen.

The real problem is that when Tobe and Rosseau bought the church building, they got in the way of a locally prominent business owner and former City Council member, Kevin Davis of Davis Electrical, who’s been trying to buy up property around his business on the cheap.

The first time the couple’s permit came up for a vote, Davis’ employee and business partner Ryan Christie was on the City Council and voted against it, about as blatant a conflict of interest as I’ve ever seen in municipal government.

In last year’s election, Christie lost his seat on the council to a write-in candidate. But it wasn’t enough to swing the majority.

Maybe next year, voters who support Tobe and Rosseau (along with integrity in government) will be able to field enough candidates to make a difference. When the church issue arose last year, the incumbents were all unopposed and it was too late for anyone else to get on the ballot.

For now, Tobe and Rosseau are living in a vacant house that’s been lent to them by a supporter. They’re not planning to appeal to a higher court, because it would take another year and money they don’t have.

Instead, they’re contemplating establishing a small business in their church building, because the city code allows for “dwelling units constructed in conjunction with and above the first floor of business establishments.”

“I’ve been on eBay since the year 2000,” she said. “It’s an internet sales business. So if it’s easier for me to just put a sign up, that’s what I’m going to do, because we’re tired.”

Tobe said Dennis Veatch, one of the couple’s local supporters and the chairman of the planning and zoning board, has been working with her and her husband to establish what they’d need to do to formalize the business to comply with the code.

“From looking at some of the little businesses on the square, I don’t think there is much,” Tobe said. “But I’m still, you know, it’s depressing. I’m still afraid that people are watching, or they’re going to report us somehow . . . We’ve been in and out of that building all the time, and nobody’s ever said anything. So I think I’m being paranoid.”

I don’t think she is, given what’s been going on for the past year in St. John.

As they say, it’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you.