"Shorewood is a Developer Town" - Bias and Capture at City Hall
How developer bias captured Shorewood City Hall — and what it costs the people who live here.
This is the introduction to our series Anatomy of a Captured City — how developer bias captured Shorewood City Hall.
Ed Note: A local resident pitched this series to us to help explain the question so many are asking - why is the City so biased in favor of developers? And we agreed to publish it. We think it's a compelling read and hope you agree.
"There are resident towns and developer towns. Shorewood is a developer town." So we were told when the Watten Ponds development arose. We were skeptical - it sounded tinfoil hat conspiracy. But after nearly a year of working with City Hall, we understand what it means - every decision is made in favor of the developer. Every. Single. One. And none are made based on residents' interests. This series tries to offer the receipts on that claim and explain why.
Shorewood is letting a developer clear one of the last stands of old-growth Big Woods in Minnesota.
City staff made a long series of decisions to get to that result. You win some, you lose some; that's life. But when one side wins every time and residents lose every time, you start to wonder. So we went looking for one decision by City staff that went against this developer — just one, anywhere. Across the tree plan, the environmental review and the stormwater management plan, we could not find a single discretionary call that did, and in court the City gave away two of the three arguments that would have ended the case. Not one example of City staff using its discretion to constrain this developer. Residents are starting to look a lot like the Washington Generals.
The only decision that went against the developer was the City Council's, when it ordered the environmental review. Staff has been working diligently to limit and undermine even that.
The tree file. The City's own Tree Preservation Policy gave it eleven distinct powers to protect these woods. There is no record that anyone at City Hall considered using one of them. Zero for eleven.
The environmental review. The Council ordered one in February, covering the phased project across all four parcels this developer owns. The developer did not want that review at all, and did not want it covering all four. His lawyers demanded in writing that it apply to one lot only, and threatened to sue the City if it didn't. Five months later, with no vote, no amendment and no public decision, that was the City's position.
The court case. The City is on appeal defending its own decision, and its brief is nowhere near as strong as it should be. The developer needed any one of three exemptions to apply. The City conceded the first, answered the third in a footnote while skipping the stronger argument beside it, and told the court it never decided the question that would have closed the second. The City's own legal filing works in the developer's favor.
The stormwater report. City code says a new development cannot send more water off the property than the land sends today. On the hundred-year storm — the one that puts water in basements — the developer’s own numbers clear that line by one and a half percent. A flood model is an estimate, not a measurement, and there is no record that anybody at the City tested this one. Every page of it in the "final plat" application is headed “Prepared by {enter your company name here}.” Houses in the area have already flooded.
Three parts of city government. Four different rulebooks. One direction, every time.
That is bias, and it has a name. Agency capture has been studied since the 1950s: a regulator drifts until it sees the world the way the people it regulates see it, and starts pushing for the outcomes those people want. You already know what it looks like, because it is the complaint people make about drug approvals, food additives, meat inspection and bank examinations — the industry ends up setting the terms it will be judged by. Here, it is a developer and the rules he has to follow.
Nobody is bribed and nobody breaks a rule, which is exactly why it lasts. A bribe is a crime somebody can prosecute. Bias is invisible, and a city with no defense against it gets the same result over and over, whether or not it is the right one. It's how you get to be known as a developer town. And just because it isn't corrupt doesn't mean it isn't doing real damage.
Ninety-eight mature trees come down on the first two lots alone. The permits for the rest will be filed online, reviewed by staff, and never seen by the City Council you elected.
It will not stop at trees. A department that doesn't ask hard questions at the permit stage is the same one that signs off on drainage that fails and basements that take water. We have all seen all of these in Shorewood, and we know who pays to fix what a permit condition would have prevented for nothing.
This is a problem with how Shorewood decides things, and it will outlast this development.
Anatomy of a Captured City
How developer bias captured Shorewood City Hall.
Public watchdog or developer lapdog? Capture and Why You Pay — The name for what happens when a regulator starts seeing things the way the people it regulates do.
The Amazing Shrinking Environmental Review — An environmental review ordered in February covered one lot by September. Nobody voted. A chronology from the City's own records.
Eleven Tools, Not One Used - a Tree Preservation Policy that Doesn't Preserve Trees — The City's tree policy gave it eleven powers over how these woods come down. There is no record it used one of them.
One and a Half Percent, a Story of a Flood Foretold — The stormwater report left only a 1.5% margin on the largest storm, uphill of homes that have already flooded, without the City's file showing that the assumptions were checked.
Letting the Clock Run Out — The City is defending its own decision on appeal. Read what its brief leaves out.
How It Happens, and What to Do About It — Why this happens to normal people, and the two small things we're asking the City Council to do.
Related posts
Read this with the related posts:
What Capture Is, and Why You Pay · The Amazing Shrinking Environmental Review · Eleven Tools, Not One Used - a Tree Preservation Policy that Doesn't Preserve Trees · One and a Half Percent, a Story of a Flood Foretold · Letting the Clock Run Out · How It Happens, and What to Do About It · A Eulogy for Arthur · If Somebody Tells You Agency Capture Isn't a Real Thing
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