Well Happy 4th of July y’all! Guess who filed a lawsuit already?! Of course we knew it was coming, just not this soon! An alert reader posted this to their Facebook page this morning:

Our friends at Social Betterment Properties have filed a Petition for Judicial Review and a Petition for Administrative Mandamus.  Since none of us here at Local Yokel are of the lawyerly type we had to look up the meaning of the word mandamus from dictionary.law.com:

(man-dame-us) n. Latin for “we order,” a writ (more modernly called a “writ of mandate”) which orders a public agency or governmental body to perform an act required by law when it has neglected or refused to do so. Examples: After petitions were filed with sufficient valid signatures to qualify a proposition for the ballot, the city refuses to call the election, claiming it has a legal opinion that the proposal is unconstitutional. The backers of the proposition file a petition for a writ ordering the city to hold the election. The court will order a hearing on the writ and afterwards either issue the writ or deny the petition. Or a state agency refuses to release public information, a school district charges fees to a student in violation of state law, or a judge will not permit reporters entry at a public trial. All of these can be subject of petitions for a writ of mandamus.

Apparently they are asking the court to make the county council give them the historical designation they so dearly want.  So folks, this is far from over. We’ll keep you updated!