Judge Rejects Bid to Nullify Board’s Rulings

A Superior Court judge on Tuesday rejected an effort to overturn dozens of decisions in recent years by the Mariposa County Board of Supervisors because they were meeting in the wrong building.

For the last three years, the board has met in a spacious and modern county government center. But county officials learned earlier this year that a long-forgotten section of Mariposa’s governing code required that public sessions be held a block away, in the county’s white-clapboard courthouse, the board’s home for nearly 150 years. When the new government center opened in October 1999, nobody bothered to amend the old code.

Mike Bird, owner of a Mariposa-based Internet server company, took the board to court, but a judge rejected his bid, which would have overturned scores of ordinances, zoning changes and other decisions by the board over the last few years.