A lawsuit over farmworker housing project is on the ropes for being a day late.

On Dec. 13, the County Board of Supervisors heard an appeal about the county Planning Commission’s denial of a proposed farmworker housing project in Pajaro. They voted 3-1 to overturn that decision.

On Dec. 15, the county’s Housing and Community Development Department issued a notice of the approval, which started a 30-day clock for any who might want to bring a lawsuit over the decision.

A handful of residents on Pajaro’s Susan Street – which will abut the project when or if it’s completed – did sue regarding the county’s approval of the project, but it is an open question whether the lawsuit was filed in a timely manner. Per the county’s records, the lawsuit was filed Jan. 18, one day after the deadline (Jan. 14-15 was a weekend, and Jan. 16 was Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a federal holiday).

Attorneys representing developers Rio Vista LLC are seeking to dismiss the lawsuit on the grounds that it wasn’t filed in a timely manner.

Susan Street resident Christine Shaw is among the plaintiffs in the group Pajaro Community Matters, and says that the group’s attorney, Babak Naficy out of San Luis Obispo, filed the lawsuit in Monterey County Superior Court around 4:45pm on Jan. 17, but the next morning was notified that one of the documents submitted – a case cover sheet – was rejected by the county’s electronic filing system.

The lawsuit alleges the county supervisors violated the California Environmental Quality Act and that they abused their discretion.

A hearing scheduled for July 14 will not determine those substantive issues, but whether the case will continue to be litigated or dismissed. Despite the pending lawsuit, the site has been graded and construction is proceeding.

Shaw, who was forced to evacuate her house in January because of flooding along the Pajaro River, thinks this past winter should make it more clear that the project is ill-conceived.

“We can’t have development in that area, no matter how much the county wants it,” Shaw says. “We can be sacrificed, it feels like, because we’re poor and mostly brown. This wouldn’t happen in Carmel.”

Mike Avila of builder Avila Construction says the project has been and will continue to be done by the book, but concedes there will always be concerns in neighborhoods about growth.

“We think we’ve done a great job preparing documentation,” he says. “We did everything we could do to get it right.”