Bankruptcy filing reveals Trinitas details

One of the legal tussles in the struggle over The Ridge at Trinitas golf course was put on hold Monday due to a procedural issue.

Calaveras County Superior Court Judge Thomas Smith ruled that owners Michael and Michelle Nemee “prematurely” and through the wrong legal avenue requested a determination that the property’s 18-hole golf course qualified as agritourism.

“The court does not make zoning interpretations, the court reviews zoning interpretations,” argued Janis Elliott, assistant county counsel.

Lawyer Ken Foley, who represents the Nemees, had filed a request for an agritourism designation in May. It came in the form of a “complaint for declaratory relief” — a legal motion which seeks an official resolution of a controversy, in this case the question of the golf course’s legality.
  

Smith ruled with county counsel in August that the complaint came too early, as the county had not yet formally decided whether golf was approved use under the zoning code.

Two months later, the Board of Supervisors upheld a Planning Commission decision that the golf course was not agritourism, a ruling Foley cited Monday.

But Judge Smith, faced with a revised complaint and a back-and-forth series of legal filings replicated in oral arguments, ruled again with the county.

Foley had argued, as he has previously, that a May 15 letter from then-interim Community Development Director Brent Harrington, which ordered golfing to stop, constituted a formal county stance.

“They have a history here that goes on to the beginning of time,” Foley said.

The judge did not agree. “The letter did not bind the county,” Smith said.

He suggested that Foley “should examine” whether, as the county argues, the dispute should be filed as a “writ of mandate,” a request that the court order a government to follow the law.

Foley has 20 days to respond to the ruling.

Meanwhile, documents filed in federal bankruptcy court early this month by the Nemees have revealed more about the development’s finances.

The couple catalogs $7.6 million in liabilities in the 60-page filing, ranging from legal fees and engineering bills to credit card debt, bank deeds of trust and personal loans.

Four Valley Springs residents are among the leading creditors. Each extended personal loans ranging from $61,000 to $1.3 million to the Nemees.

The couple owes the Community Bank of San Joaquin, whose foreclosure proceedings prompted the bankruptcy filing, $2.5 million.

The 380 acres on which stand the Nemees’ olive orchard, golf course, clubhouse and home, secure nearly $3 million in debts, well beyond the three parcels’ combined assessed value of $2.6 million.

Elsewhere in the document, the Nemees claim the 160-acre parcel that includes their house is worth more than $7.3 million. The county valued it this year at $1.58 million.

Through the end of September, Trinitas Enterprises had made $160,636 this year, versus nearly $1.2 million in expenses, including $194,405 in payroll alone, plus more than $300,000 in both interest payments and “EIR/legal” expenses, according to the filing.

Michael Nemee also earned about $100,000 this year and each of the last two years from NEx Systems, a Stockton-based carpet care company. The couple also owns a 5 percent share in the company.

Despite their financial troubles, the Nemees have been regular donors to two Stockton churches and a Catholic radio network.

Between October 2008 and September 2009, the Nemees donated $2,210 to the Cathedral of the Annunciation in Stockton, in mostly $50 increments.

More than $150 apiece went to Immaculate Heart Radio in Fair Oaks and Church for Tomorrow in Stockton.