In a contentious vote on May 2, the Camp Verde Town Council accepted the settlement agreement put forward by Cheri and John Wischmeyer, hoping to end the dispute over park construction that has been delaying the planned Camp Verde Sports Complex since Mayor Charlie German was served the lawsuit at a council meeting on Feb. 28.
The settlement agreement calls for moving a drainage ditch on the north end of the park a few feet to keep it as far as possible from the Wischmeyers’ property while still fitting into the park blueprints. It also requires the town to fill that area with vegetation to create a buffer zone. The lawsuit will not be fully dismissed until the vegetation is planted as stipulated in the agreement.
According to Town Manager Russ Martin, the required changes should be finished by June or July, allowing for construction of the park to start in earnest in August.
The vote was 5-2, with council members Brad Gordon and Robin Whately voting against the agreement.
“Even though basically this plan doesn’t give the Wischmeyers anything they wouldn’t have gotten in the first place, except maybe shoving the drainage ditch over a little bit, this sets a poor precedent for the town, to basically let property owners try to dictate what we’re going to landscape or anything else we’re going to do on our property,” Gordon said at the meeting. “There shouldn’t be any litigation as far as I’m concerned.”
Town officials said after the initial difficulty of the lawsuit, negotiations went relatively easily, and a compromise was reached without too much stress.
“The solution is a good responsible solution, and I think the Wischmeyers recognize that, thankfully,” Martin said. He expressed regret that it had to come to a legal dispute, costing the town money for legal fees and delaying construction, but he said he felt that after initial brinkmanship, the Wischmeyers seemed comfortable coming to a compromise.
“It was what we were asking for and it’s pretty much what we were asking for all along,” Cheri Wischmeyer said. The Wischmeyers expressed positive feelings about the settlement negotiations, saying the town’s attorney negotiated in good faith, but lamented that negotiations like that seemingly could not have happened without the legal threat. “We tried to resolve it before we filed the lawsuit, and they were not open to discussing anything, and basically the things we were asking for in the very beginning are the same things we ended up with, but they weren’t willing to give them to us in the beginning.”
German expressed displeasure that he was targeted in the lawsuit, rather than the town. He lamented that future actions by the council could end up hamstrung by future lawsuits from individuals, blocking the town from completing its long-sought goals.
“In the interest of having the park built, I’m willing to agree to this,” German said at the May 2 meeting. “You just kind of second-guess what you’re doing. I guess that’s my frustration. We have our marching orders from our general plan, and our river recreation master plan that the voters have voted on, and the focused future too. Those are the three major documents that basically give council and the town government direction as to what the voters wanted and how they want their community to look in the future. For 34 years we’ve been trying to get a sports complex.”
Jon Hecht can be reached at 282-7795 or email jhecht@larsonnewspapers.com
