What You Should Know About the Belmont Subdivision Lawsuit
With $16.3 million on the line, the people of Talent deserve to know how this happened
If you keep up on local news you’ve probably heard something about a major lawsuit against the City of Talent over a subdivision and a railroad crossing, and you may know there’s a trial coming up on October 7th, but maybe you’re still not quite getting what the whole thing is really about or why it matters. Well, you’re not alone. It’s a dense, layered, and jargony case, it might even present to some as a bit too dull to look further into. Wrong! Talent Council Watch (TCW) has been digging through every available court document and now we’re here to break it down for you. We think it’s important that our fellow Talent citizens understand the basics of the lawsuit that we might all end up on the hook for, and how decisions made by our City leaders can put the entire community at risk.
TCW takes no stance on these types of development projects in general, and we’re certainly not “aligned with wealthy developers” (an accusation that’s been thrown around at people critical of City Council). We’re trying to help those who would be most affected by this lawsuit better understand what the issues are here, beyond the most obvious facts of the case. Because even the most obvious facts aren’t that obvious in this one. It’s just a hard to follow situation.
Although to be clear, we’re definitely hoping that the City of Talent will not have to pay out over 16 million dollars. That could be catastrophic for our town. But this article is meant only to educate the public on what this trial is about and why the lawsuit happened, and to connect it to patterns we’ve noticed, because an informed citizenry is our best defense against corruption and abuse of power in City government.
The Story
There is a sweet 26 acre piece of land in South Talent that has remained undeveloped all these years, albeit not for lack of trying. We’re talking about the soft rolling vista just west of Talent Ave. a few blocks south of Creel. It’s the low foothills you see from that part of Talent Ave. where the railroad tracks run alongside you and the houses are modest and sparse. It’s a stunning area of town, quintessentially Talent, stewarded by an elite group of blessed/lucky/wise landowners.
The particular land under dispute is owned by the plaintiff, one Talent View Investments LLC. (TVI), members of which (aka Tony Nieto and Eric Artner of Medford) have been trying to develop their 26 acres into a 49-lot single family home subdivision (aka Talent View Estates) since 2007. Their inability to get anywhere, they argue, is the product of Talent government officials doing whatever they could do at each step of the process to stop the subdivision from being built in that location. The alleged hows and whys of that we’ll get into, but the crux of what has resulted in this lawsuit is whether what City officials did was, in fact, within their power to do. Or not do, as this case may be.
And what they did not do was apply for a railroad crossing upgrade, a required step for this land’s development. TVI claims the City was contractually obligated to apply, the City argues it was not, and now they’re going to trial over it with 16.3 million dollars at stake.
Backing up just a bit: The original owners of the land (the Arndt Family) made a deal with the City of Talent way back in 1977 that they would grant the City a little piece of their property to build and maintain a water reservoir in exchange for a commitment from the City to enable development of the rest of the land in the future. The 1977 agreement explicitly included the Belmont railroad crossing upgrade in this provision:
In order to enable the proper development of the area, City shall at the request of Arndt or his successors support, or join in or make application for a grade crossing for an extension of Belmont Street across the Southern Pacific tracks to serve the area; provided that the cost of the construction of the grade crossing and installation of any protective devices as required by law shall be underwritten or provided by someone other than the City.
This is really the key passage being disputed. It’s the language used in this provision that will be thoroughly scrutinized and should factor big into the arguments presented at trial.
So why does the Belmont railroad crossing matter so much? A few reasons.
Belmont Rd. would be the only road access to the new subdivision. It would serve as its single entry/exit point, at least for a while.
Belmont crosses over the railroad tracks at a private crossing, but that would need to be turned into a public crossing if a residential subdivision were to be built. That mostly means additional safety elements and infrastructure. It’s a big, expensive undertaking and a permit from the Oregon Department of Transportation Railroads (ODOT Rail) is required.
But only the City of Talent can submit the application for the permit to ODOT Rail, it’s not something that can be done by a private landowner.
ODOT Rail doesn’t just hand out public crossings all willy nilly. For safety reasons it tries to limit the number of them that exist, which means it will often require the closing of at least one other public crossing in order for a new one to be granted. In this case, the crossing just south at Public Road (on Jackson County land) would be closed and an alternate road would need to be built to serve those residents who rely on that other crossing to get to their homes.
Basically, the subdivision cannot be built unless the City applies for and receives a permit from the State to upgrade a railroad crossing. The City has refused to do that.
Although - and this part is important to the City’s defense - it did actually submit a crossing upgrade application in 1994 at the behest of a previous landowners, thereby completing its contractual obligation, according to the City’s attorneys. But the upgrade work wasn’t performed and the permit eventually expired.
The City is essentially now saying ‘this is not our problem, we already did what we were obligated to do and it’s not our fault the previous owner didn’t follow through with their plans.’
The son of the Arndts, however, claims that the 1994 application was “a meaningless gesture because the City’s Planning Commission denied the subdivision of the Property,” and that regardless, the City’s responsibility to apply for the permit was intended by his parents to mean until the land was actually developed, not only until a permit was approved. Of course, if that distinction holds up in court remains to be seen; the jury could come to a different conclusion.
In 2007 the new landowner/developer attempted to start building on that land, but it wasn’t until 14 years later that they finally got past the Talent Planning Commission following a very lengthy series of denials, appeals and a big reversal. By the spring of 2021, the developer just needed that application submitted so the upgrade work could begin. The plaintiff claims they repeatedly made it clear to City staff that TVI would cover all costs associated with the crossing upgrade, and that its proposal for Talent View Estates met the standards requirements and was consistent with both the City’s Railroad District Master Plan and its Transportation System Plan. In other words, the developer did everything they were supposed to do, had checked off all the boxes and was waiting on the City to do its part. At that point, the City Manager had intended to submit the application. City planning staff had done the paperwork, completed the necessary diagnostic processes, and was just about set to send in the upgrade permit application to ODOT.
But then City officials higher up decided to use the Belmont crossing application submission as an opportunity to stop Talent View Estates from being built, according to TVI’s complaint. The Community Development Director at the time testified that she was ready to submit the permit application to ODOT, but she was instructed not to by City Manager Rooklyn (her boss) because, as she remembers being told, “we aren’t obligated to.” She confirmed that Rooklyn had recommended approval of the application the month prior, but changed course after meeting with the Mayor, City Council, and the City Attorney. In June 2022, Rooklyn let Nieto and TVI know that the City would not be moving forward with the application and would not be discussing it or negotiating with him any further.
TVI ultimately brought three claims against the City in its complaint, filed in 2023 and amended in 2025:
Breach of Contract
Breach of the Duty of Good Faith and Fair Dealing
Inverse Condemnation (arguing that by blocking development, the City is effectively taking the property for public use as parkland without compensation)
The judge allowed the first two counts to move forward but dismissed the Inverse Condemnation claim, so that won’t be part of the upcoming trial.
The amount of the lawsuit is the projected profit TVI claims was lost due to the City’s refusal to apply for the crossing upgrade. It’s not clear exactly where that money would come from if the City lost this case, but we do know that individual officials cannot be held financially responsible, and we know that municipal insurance coverage doesn’t typically apply to contract disputes. If that holds true, it’s reasonable to assume Talent taxpayers will be on the hook for that $16.3 million in one way or another.
Here are a few things that make this case more interesting than you might think it is.
The Opposition
It’s no secret that development of that area didn’t have a ton of support in Talent in general, but among many of the folks with homes and property nearby, it was (and is) an especially unpopular proposal. Social media and public hearings have at times been loud with residents objecting to the subdivision being built in that location, owing mostly to the perceived taxpayer costs, safety risks, and the disruptions and inconveniences they believed would be created by its construction.
Not only was there an officially recognized neighborhood association founded in response to imminent development of the area, it also happened to be a neighborhood where most of the Talent Planning Commission lived when the subdivision proposal came before it.
Needless to say, Nieto and TVI had quite an uphill battle ahead of them from the get go. TVI says in its complaint that the prevailing attitude among the Planning Commission before the hearings even began was that “development of the Property should not be allowed.” The plaintiff’s complaint states:
City planning commission members owned interests in properties adjacent to the Property and strongly opposed the development of the Property in order to protect the “parklike” surroundings of their own properties. No member of the planning commission recused themselves from votes on the development of the Property.
Talent View Investments LLC v. City of Talent - First Amended Complaint (PDF)
Who knows how this will land with the jury, but the fact that most of the Commission lived right next to the subdivision property and would have been directly affected by its development, but then didn’t recuse themselves from voting on the permit, is pretty compelling. We’re reminded of another recent situation where TURA members voting on a development plan also did not recuse themselves despite personally benefiting from its approval. This is apparently something that happens kind of a lot in Talent?
The Decision Makers
Elite capture of urban development is a term used in city planning and governance studies to describe when those with power, resources, or influence take control of public decision-making processes (i.e. zoning, permit approvals, infrastructure planning) to serve their own interests instead of the broader community.
In other words, instead of planning being about the public good, elite capture is when it gets shaped by the people who already hold power: elected officials, wealthy landowners, well-connected developers, or politically influential groups.
What’s likely to be argued by the plaintiff’s attorneys in court is that in the Belmont case, the elite weren’t the developers but rather the City’s own leaders, who are being accused of bending planning decisions to shield their own neighborhoods and those of their friends. The depositions and exhibits included in trial documents show the plaintiff’s attorney trying to make the case that the close personal relationships between the Mayor, the Chair of the Planning Commission, and the Founder of the South Talent Neighborhood Association played a role in determining the outcome, aka the failure, of Talent View Estates.
It may be hard for the defense to argue that the Planning Commission Chair and Belmont area resident serving as the Matron of Honor at the Mayor’s wedding is totally irrelevant to the case. But we don’t know how effective TVI attorneys will be at convincing the jury it had a significant impact on the City’s refusal to submit the application. It's interesting either way though.
One of the Mayor’s comments on social media is included as an exhibit in the case, presumably in order to argue that she was at least partly responsible for the City Manager’s abrupt shift from recommending the permit to instructing the Community Development Director not to submit the rail upgrade application because they were “not obligated” to do so. Here’s what the Mayor said in July 2021:
“No developer can force the city to build infrastructure. No developer can build a development without the infrastructure. The stand-off is therefore between the builder and the city. No more needs to be done or should be done in my humble opinion.”
Mayor Darby Ayers-Flood comment on Nextdoor, July 2021
The context of the Mayor’s comment was her defending the actions of the Planning Commission and accusing a few vocal members of the community of trying to get others unnecessarily riled up and worried about something that wasn’t going to happen - and the reason it wouldn’t happen was because the City had the power to stop it by simply not doing anything. Which is… exactly what happened.
The question being: Was it the Mayor’s personal relationships with the people leading the opposition to the Belmont development that ultimately resulted in City staff being instructed not to submit the application? Whatever the answer is, it’s a fair question to ask given the circumstances.
The Staff
One unsettling aspect to this whole debacle is the way a few members of the City Council & Planning Commission spoke publicly about the City staff during this process. The Mayor and Planning Commission Chair Joi Riley both went on social media to make serious allegations against City employees - specifically the previous City Development Director and previous City Manager - about lying in an appeal hearing and making “backroom deals” with the landowner, a claim which Nieto’s partner denied.
“I believe the planning commission did all the right things in the face of tricky staff who literally were doing backroom deals, their legacy is well known by many and won’t soon be forgotten. Staff by the way who are no longer with the city.”
Mayor Darby Ayers-Flood comment on Nextdoor, July 2021 - Screenshot
It’s worth pointing out that much of this was happening at the peak of a particularly tense time: the chaotic and tragic second half of 2020 and Talent’s reconstruction period of 2021. Aside from everything else going on locally and across the world, in Talent we saw a dramatic rift play out in public between elected officials and City employees, inflamed by the Mayor’s ‘liking’ of a Councilor’s social media post about the police in June 2020. Remember that? Oof, it was ugly. Staff morale was low, tensions were high, accusations were made, resignations were called for, and a lot of people left or were fired from their positions as civil servants for Talent.
Based on what we can decipher from court documents and the plaintiff’s supporting evidence, a majority of the City Council and the Planning Commission were opposed to allowing the Belmont development to happen. It also look like City staff were perpetually stuck between a rock and a hard place: Trying to avoid violating the developer’s rights and doing what City leaders wanted them to do, all while they or their predecessors were being publicly accused by those same people of secrecy and deception.
Of course there’s always more to the story than what can be found out from public records, but we do know from other incidences during this rough period in Talent history that the way City staff was treated and talked about by Council and Commission members was pretty awful. The fact that they were never held accountable for that is probably deserving of a whole article of its own.
The Cost
This lawsuit may be about just one subdivision, but the story it tells isn’t new or unique. It fits into a pattern of behavior we’ve seen before in Talent government: Decisions being made behind closed doors instead of in public forums. Conflicts of interest normalized, with officials commonly voting on matters that directly affect their own property or business. City staff being undermined and scapegoated, a system of top-down mayoral rule despite our weak-mayor system, and insiders protecting their own interests, while the risks of their actions get shifted to taxpayers.
The Belmont crossing case just puts all these dynamics into sharper focus because the stakes are so high. But whether the jury finds the City liable for $16.3 million or not, our community simply can’t afford to have a governing body that puts us all at risk by operating this way.
We’ll have more to share once the trial concludes. Until then, the best safeguard Talent has is you, an informed public paying attention to what’s going on at City Hall. Thank you for reading.
This article does a valuable job of describing the can of worms Talent faces regarding the Belmont railroad crossing and the questionable development of the land behind it. But the article barely mentions what I consider to be a most compelling argument against the development, namely the single ingress-egress point for that prospective residential neighborhood. Even if the crossing were a bridge over the tracks (such that vehicles could pass regardless of the presence of a train), there would still be an intolerable bottleneck of commuter traffic, morning and night, at that intersection. And in the case of a mass emergency, there might be a crush of 49 households trying to escape, blocking access for emergency vehicles trying to get in! The whole idea of a single access to so many homes is unreasonable, and must be taken into account.
I appreciate the concise and carefully constructed layout of the situation facing Talent and its taxpayers. I am new to Talent, recently moved from Brookings on the coast and worked for Curry County for 5 years. I had to do some deep diving into County records a few times only to find that oops, they disappeared. The stories of corruption are rife. One story of County corruption garnered the local radio station KCIW an Award (2023)from Edward R. Morrow for its excellent reporting. Our best protection is reliable information, being involved and seeking the truth. Thank you for your efforts.