Woman Gets $4.8 Million in Lawsuit Over School Site

Santa Maria High School Supt. Jeff Hearn didn’t think he had a choice. He had never thought he would be involved in forcing a widow in her 80s off the farm where she had spent her life.

But he had a job to do. Mabel Dias had to go.

There was only one problem. Dias didn’t want to sell her land as a site for a new city high school. At least not at the prices the school district was talking about.

So Dias went to court and on July 10, she won a major victory. While she still has to leave her family farm, the jury decided to award her $4.8 million -- more than twice the school district’s initial offer of about $2 million.

“I think school districts have to have the power of eminent domain,” said her attorney, Dick Weldon. “They need condemnation rights or it would be pretty hard to build schools anywhere. But condemnation is supposed to be fair. That’s what this trial was about.”

Mark Easter, attorney for the school district, said the $4.8 million will have to be deposited in a bank and can be withdrawn by Dias during the appeals process. But she would have to repay at least part of it if the verdict were modified.

Santa Maria is the fastest growing city in Santa Barbara County. It’s already well past the 80,000 mark and is headed for a projected population of 115,000 in just seven years.

And Hearn is the head of a high school system fast sinking under the weight of that growing population. During the last 40 years, it has made do with two high schools that are now approaching the breaking point.

Santa Maria High School, built in the early 1900s, has 3,800 students, and Ernest Righetti High School has 2,500. Each was built for 1,500 students.

Another 3,000 high school students are expected by the year 2010. The city desperately needs two new high schools to accommodate them, Hearn said. He won a $30-million bond issue in 2000 to build one of them while repairing the city’s two older schools. And he plans another bond election next year to raise money for the second.

Mabel Dias owned 117 acres on the eastern edge of the city, leasing the land to Betteravia Farms, which used it for row crops like lettuce, broccoli and sugar peas. A 57-acre chunk of that property turned out to be the most attractive possible site for the new school. It passed all the environmental hurdles, and Hearn said state education officials agreed it was the perfect place to build Santa Maria’s new Pioneer Valley High School.

The district’s position was that a fair price for her land should be based on the fair market value of farmland in the area.

Attorney Weldon said his client believed that a more appropriate price would be one based on land rezoned for housing. In fact, he said, the Irvine Co. just happened to be eyeing her entire property for development.

There were nine months of negotiating. Then, nearly a year ago, the Santa Maria Joint Union High School District seized the 57 acres it wanted, and started building the school. The two sides ended up in court, still arguing about a fair price.

“We ended up bringing in three different appraisals,” Weldon said. The school district started around $20,000 an acre, one appraiser estimated it was worth about $80,000 an acre and a developer’s appraiser estimated $115,000 an acre.

In addition to the award to Dias, the jury also awarded $280,000 to Betteravia Farms for the loss of its leased row crops. Within a few days, school district lawyers were working on an appeal to the 2nd District Court of Appeal, calling the jury’s award grossly inflated.

There is a good chance Dias’ remaining 60 acres will end up as housing, many involved in the case suspect. Weldon said Dias will not discuss the case, partly out of shyness and partly because the school district’s new legal moves have begun.

The school district may end up paying more than they bargained for, officials said last week. But Hearn remained more concerned about the future of the city’s schools. He had a victory of his own to claim.

“Pioneer Valley High will open in August of 2004, and there’s no stopping that,” he said.