I never did receive an email response directly from Bow…but did get very polite and friendly responses from Denise. The first response passed back via Denise was that he hadn’t received the contact from the web site, but that he would look into the situation and get back to me by 11/4, which was in about a week.

That week stretched out to almost two months. After what Denise reported to me as multiple staff meetings to discuss this situation, he mailed a letter to my Washington address on 12/29/2009. Denise was kind enough to PDF this letter and email it to me. Since we are now camped out on the property in Flamingo Heights, with no mail service (because the house hasn't had the final inspection), it would be a while before mail to Washington would get back to us here via UPS (they don’t care if you have a certificate of occupancy).

Although they didn’t admit in this letter that this particular instance of using police power to force us to sign the road dedication wasn’t appropriate, they did stop parroting the safety and well-being clause and instead fell back on a Federal Land Patent recorded in 1958 when the parcel was transferred from the Federal Government to the original private owner.

I didn’t remember seeing anything about this when we bought the property, but checked the title report and it is indeed referenced in there. So although I still believe that in this case the county ruling that allows them to take property without going through eminent domain is not legal, the land patent is legal and I no longer have a valid argument against signing the road dedication.