Jensen sues Loveland City Council again over Centerra South development

LOVELAND — A Loveland resident has filed a second complaint in Larimer County District Court involving the Loveland City Council’s actions surrounding the urban-renewal and financing agreements for the proposed Centerra South development.

Barbershop owner Bill Jensen, who is appealing a district judge’s decision in March to throw out his complaint alleging that the previous city council’s votes to approve the agreements with developer McWhinney Real Estate Services were invalid based on open-meetings violations and improper notice, filed another complaint last week.

Representing himself, Jensen’s new lawsuit contends that the council deprived him of transparency and violated open-meetings law when a quorum emerged from an executive session at 2:15 a.m. on Feb. 21 and reversed its Nov. 21 decision to rescind the McWhinney agreements. Jensen alleges that the action was done “without a full and timely notice to the public” and without citizens’ opportunity to comment on the action it took.

McWhinney sued the city on Nov. 28, a week after its vote to rescind the agreements, and Jensen’s lawsuit alleges that the developer offered a settlement agreement at 7 p.m. Feb. 20 during the council’s meeting — but that the tendered offer was only valid for five hours, ending at midnight, a half hour before the council quorum went into executive session and more than two hours before it emerged in the wee hours of Feb. 21 and voted to restore the Centerra South agreements.

Jensen’s complaint alleges that that 2:15 a.m. vote was taken “when ordinary community members are asleep in their beds … thus denying the public of their broad rights to transparent policy making.”

Jensen’s complaint seeks a court hearing on his contentions. “I want to show a judge that what they did was improper” and violated Colorado’s open-meetings laws, he told BizWest.

Jensen in May appealed District Court Judge C. Michelle Brinegar’s March decision to throw out the complaint he filed in December over the council’s actions during the runup to the approval of the Centerra South urban-renewal area in April and May 2023. That complaint alleged that the previous city council’s votes to approve the agreements with McWhinney were invalid based on the alleged violations and improper notice.

Brinegar’s dismissal was not based on the complaint’s merits but on laws that prohibit relitigation of claims that had already been decided. Jensen had filed a complaint in June 2023 echoing Loveland mayor Jacki Marsh’s contention that the council didn’t provide sufficient notice for the May 2, 2023, hearing and vote on Centerra South, and asked the court to determine whether Colorado’s urban-renewal laws had been violated. District Judge Laurie Dean dismissed that complaint last September but also not on its merits; she ruled Jensen filed it after a statutory deadline.

Jensen’s appeal, which has yet to be ruled upon by the Colorado Court of Appeals in Denver, alleges that Brinegar’s ruling was in error and that his complaint should be remanded back to the Eighth Judicial District Court in Larimer County.

The case is Bill Jensen v. Loveland City Council in Larimer County District Court, case number 2024-CV-170.

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