"The towns were told this was mandated, and it wasn’t mandated. This was false," said Allard. "I don’t believe it was intentional, but it was false, and the towns backed out. The towns should have a right to back out when they are given false information."

Supervisor Michael Robin responded, "I can’t give testimony as to what NWRPC told the town of Crystal and the town of Trego, however I’ve heard NWRPC talk to other towns, and I know they never said it was mandated to come up with that plan."

"They told them exactly what state law said, which is ‘if you want to have any say in land use decisions in your town after 2010, you have to have a comprehensive plan’. If it was said or not, the towns had a legal responsibility to get a hold of an attorney. It’s not up to NWRPC or the county to offer up legal advice to the towns."

"That being said, the towns entered into a contract by passing a resolution from the towns to take the grant money and enter into the comprehensive plan, and I don’t think it is very good business to enter into a contract and back out."

Washburn County Chair Pete Hubin asked Washburn County Corporate Attorney Ed Fischer whether the county had contracts with the four towns.

"They are not signed contracts as such," said Fischer. "They are resolutions that foretell a path, their intention to participate in a planning process, and they actually did participate in the planning process."

"Their position currently is there is no contract," Kathy ZumBrunmen, an attorney representing the towns of Trego, Crystal, and Bashaw, said to the supervisors. "There was a resolution passed by a number of municipalities that they intended to participate in a comprehensive planning program."

"The county was in a position, as were some of the townships originally, that they were going to look toward someone who represented or understood what the Smart Growth process was."

"The townships, in order to participate in formulating a comprehensive plan, must have village powers. They cannot formulate a comprehensive plan unless they have village powers."

"So those townships never had any authority or any ability to start to formulate a planning commission or to hold meetings or to schedule meetings."

"Now it’s the townships’ position that the person initiating the Smart Growth process, the first thing they should have done when they went to town meetings is to say; ‘Do you have village powers? If you don’t have village powers that is what you have to do in order to participate in this program.’"

ZumBrunmen said none of the towns she represented had village powers.

"Mr. Bobin is saying they should have obtained legal advice," she said. "Our position is there should never have been an application for a grant that represented that these entities had the ‘ability to formulate a plan.’ They didn’t. All the townships I have been involved with said when this was presented to them that they were told they had to do it and that they had the ability to do it, which was not correct."

"Nor have any of these municipalities enter into a contract; nor did they agree to apply for a grant."

"The resolution said they had an intent to formulate an agreement, which should have been done before you entered into any kind of a contract. You should have had an agreement, and there was no ‘agreement.’"

"Before you start to initiate litigation, it would be our request [that] we sit down with the county and discuss what the situation is and what we should do to solve it. And who, other than these municipalities, should kick in some money for apparently what was a big mess," said ZumBrunnen.

Supervisor Robert Washkuhn asked for a resolution to postpone a vote. "Postpone for what?" asked Robin.

"To allow communication between the towns and the county," Hubin said.

Supervisor Clay Halverson said NWRPC should be part of the communications.

Supervisor Greg Kranti asked ZumBrunnen if the towns’ resolutions at subsequent meetings showed intent by the towns.

"No, for a couple of reasons," said ZumBrunnen. "One is the townships had absolutely no authority to do that. When you figure out who owes what money, it would be my position to say if you hired the expert to formulate the plan, and you formulated the plan and got the benefit of a service, in perhaps an oral contract, then you should have to pay them for the fair market value of their services."

"The problem with this is there is absolutely no value to their services because all of the meetings, all the work they did, all of the committee meetings they were meeting at, were absolutely void because there was no authority to do that," she said.

ZumBrunnen said without village powers, the first time a lawyer questioned the towns’ comprehensive plan, it would be brought out that the plan was developed illegally. She added that the townships were not without some blame, but she added, "We are going to spread it around somewhat."

The supervisors voted unanimously to postpone the vote.