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11/22/04 It's
only yours, until the ODB want your property.
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Boy, this
eminent domain stuff is breaking out all over. If you spent too much
money on some Downtown property and you are not ready to develop your
project, you may not own the land for long or not long enough to ever see
your started, much less finished. If you have a little business near
the Trinity Corridor, you may not own it for long either. |
Justifying land theft in the
name of "urban renewal" is like justifying bank robbery in the name of economic
incentive. It's not right, and no rationalization or false justification
is going to make it right, rational or justified.
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Robin Hood stole from the rich and gave to the
poor. If he's your hero and you support "redistribution of wealth" and
you think "motive" counts for more than "right", then you should stop
reading right here because you are not going to like anything I have to say.
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| If Farmer Brown wants to sit
and raise wildflowers and cultivate weeds on his property that sits where some
"connected" developer or government bureaucrat sees more pavement and
construction, I say Farmer Brown should be able to keep his property. If
he's got trash and debris on his property, he should clean it up and the city
has a right to demand that he do so. The city should not take his property
for any other reason than to build a road, build a school or build a jail.
Even then, there should be absolute proof that Farmer Brown's property is
essential to a specific public use -- not to facilitate some developer's land
acquisition. |
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Peter Y. Wrench
I couldn't agree more with your
assessment of eminent domain.
The forced acquisition of land is one
of the most egregious acts a government can
perform, and should be effected only for the most dire situations when a
TRULY public interest is at stake, such as a road, school, or jail, NOT for
a sports venue or a mall or any other private business.
There is something
patently offensive about taking grandma's house so
some millionaire can make money flipping his property to a fool who
buys into the fantasy of "ancillary development" around some of these
flagship construction projects.
I fought so hard against the AAC in
1997-1998 and fought against the tax measure in Arlington this year
because it is offensive to take
somebody's property with force except under the
most dire circumstances.
In
Arlington, the City Council are already discussing whose houses they might
have to level in order to accommodate the Cowboys. Offensive. |
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As usual, Emily Ramshaw sorts through hours of boring discussion and propaganda,
and pulls out the zingers that make the deception transparent. The Downton
LGC (local government corporation) and the Trinitiy Project are all about
eminent domain -- taking one person's private property and giving it to someone
more "connected" to City Hall and Our Downtown Betters (the ODB).
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Visions for Trinity discussed at forum;
Planners seek Central
Park feel; residents fear damage to communities
November 20,
2004 By EMILY RAMSHAW / The Dallas
Morning News |
...
On Saturday, scores of
neighbors, property owners and students shared in that vision, gathering to
offer suggestions on a land-use plan four years in the making.
But not everyone shared the planners'
excitement. Some residents voiced fears that
their traditional communities would be overrun with redevelopment. And
others warned of environmental dangers if the
current proposal comes to fruition.
... "What we envision is essentially the image of
Dallas when the Trinity is flooded, with the lights of buildings shining off
the water," said Mark Bowers, a landscape architect and planner with HNTB,
the firm designing the plan. "It will be an urban river through the central
core."
Mr. Bowers stressed that
the plan is still in draft form, and changes will be
made after the public and City Council members have had a chance to give
their input.
... "The community has said, 'This is what we
would like to have,' " Mr. Bowers said. "Our job is to find out what the
obstacles are."
... Warehouse space along Irving Boulevard
would be turned into an urban living strip, including retail and residential
development.
... "The goal is to maximize our investment in the
Trinity River Project," said JoAnn Wilkerson, the project coordinator over
economic development. "Places are going to change based on the impact of
this project. And developers are already responding."
Early implementation ideas include
zoning changes and tax increment finance districts, which provide incentives
for redevelopment. Consultants said voters could opt to install
a redevelopment authority, which could seize private
property for public use through eminent domain.
... "Dallas will look like a Central Park, a Back
Bay in Boston, or San Francisco's Golden Gate Park," Mr. Bowers said.
... "All this looks great on paper," Neely Kerr
said. "But some of this is like Disneyland. It looks great, but there's
nothing behind the facade."
Several property owners voiced
concerns about land acquisition and whether minority neighborhoods would be
protected. Debe Nichols, who represents a group of commercial retailers
along Irving Boulevard, said she's concerned that the city is planning to
steamroll over well-established businesses.
"They wouldn't be moving us ? they'd
be acquiring our property," she said. "I don't think
they have the power yet to do it." |
Emily Ramshaw can write and
clearly has a grownup vocabulary. Rather than saying Saturday's Trinity
Project meeting was attended by a meager group of citizens, not hundreds or
remotely representative of the city's population, Ramshaw says "scores
of neighbors, property owners and students"
gathered
to discuss the Trinitiy Project. To those of you under 50, "scores" means
"twenties" -- as in that early Republican's famous quote "Four scores and seven
years ago..." (87 years ago).
These meetings have been going on how long? The bureaucrats and the people
who OWN City Hall know exactly what they are doing and have been doing with all
these meetings -- wear down the opposition. After all these meetings, "the
plan is still in draft form".
It's in draft form because it's all hypothesis and wishful thinking. At
this point, the only thing they actually know for sure is that their plans will
wipe out the viaducts because the few times a year the Trinity Sewer has enough
water in it to be called a river it will run so fast and hard under their
configuration that the water and flood debris will wipe out the support beams of
the existing bridges.
The bureaucrats and the ODB hold all these meetings where only "scores" of
citizens show up (not hundreds or even thousands), but they have the nerve to
claim the "community
has said, 'This is what we would like to have...".
Well, that's just a big fat lie!
When we had the Trinity Bondoogle election back in May of 1998, the thing passed
by 1% and much of that "winning margin" was mail-in ballots delivered by the
same crooks who scammed us in January of that year.
If the election had been a landslide or even 4 or 5% victory margin, Bowers'
statement would be a lie because we had no plan, we had brochures with sail
boats and swans floating on some mythical lake in the middle of the Trinity
River. Voters were not told it would cost a minimum of $3 million annually
to maintain a "fresh water" lake in between two channels of a sewer trough, a
"fresh water" lake that would have to be drained and refilled every time the
sewer trough sloshed over into the "fresh water" lake. The Trinity Project
has been redesigned so many times since the May, 1998 bond election, it is not
anything like the lies told to the voters.
Ironically, Our Mayor who now thinks the Trinity Project is the city's most
important matter opposed the Trinity Bond election. She rationalizes
her new position to the changes in the current plans resolve her previous concerns -- but it's still
a road project that pushes a sewer trough out of its natural flow into a
billion-dollar experiment that is not going to work.
I know it's a weak argument to complain about pushing around the Trinity because
"connected" families of Dallas have a history of doing just that -- moving the
Trinity out of its natural route so the early ODB (including generations of
Belo's founding family) could make even more money. For as long as
Dallas has been beyond a collection of log cabins, the "connected" have been
creating public projects that Joe Taxpayer gets to pay for, even though the
projects only benefit the "connected" developers.
Ramshaw quotes the project coordinator who mentions "a
redevelopment authority, which could seize private property for public use
through eminent domain".
Guys, this is serious stuff! When any government or worse "redevelopment
authority" can "seize private property" to give to another developer and call it
"public use" or "urban redevelopment" or "economic development", there is
absolutely no reason to hold title to any real estate, except for income tax
purposes.
If we are only borrowing our land until the ODB or some bureaucrats decide they
want what's ours, why bother? |
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Judd Bradbury:
An excellent article. We
could not agree more on the LGC.
The LGC is the biggest lemon Dallas has ever seen. The
best example of government corporations
would be Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These
organizations were very well thought out
with lots of checks and balances and their
governance systems still failed.
Turning
over eminent domain and the power to issue bonds is
the outsourcing of our local government. I
could not be more opposed to this initiative.
Before the presidential election, I
listened to Joe Trippi give a speech about how
economic interests are
beginning to seize power from the government.
We all
better believe it and soon. Andrew Jackson and
Teddy Roosevelt railed against corporations for their ever expanding
control. I can only imagine what they would think
about corporations taking over the government itself.
The bright spot is that property
owners are beginning to sue cities for abuse of
eminent domain and they are winning.
Corporations have nobody to be kicked
and no soul to be damned. The same is not true for
politicians. |
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Why improve your property when some big shot can decide they can use your
property better and buys off some politician to get their approval?
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Your business may be important to you and your customers or clients, but the
Trinity Project coordinator and a whole lot of "connected" developers about town
are not likely to see things as you do.
Your property will be be SEIZED
for a very exaggerated claim of PUBLIC USE. |
Some people still think they
can trust their elected officials and public employees to protect them.
They don't know what's coming at them and
don't understand how crooked politicians, control freaks and greedy developers
are conspiring to deprive the rest of us from owning property.
Ramshaw
quotes a woman who says "They
wouldn't be moving us ? they'd be acquiring our property.
I don't think they have the power yet to do it."
Poor lady just has not been paying attention to the new order of socialism in
Dallas, in Texas and in other US cities. If it were not so serious a
situation, her naivet?would be quite charming. Her naivet?may well cost
her the ownership of her property.
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What the ODB owns is theirs, what you and I own will be theirs when they get
ready to tell the politicians and bureaucrats to take our property from us and
give it to them. |
The city should be selling off our underused and overpriced "public properties"
and getting that land and those buildings back on the tax rolls. Whenever
private property is SEIZED for use in one of these private/public con jobs, the
ODB developer usually negotiates a tax-free or semi-tax exempt arrangement with
the city and county for his new property that used to be yours and on the tax
rolls.
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Stealing is stealing --
no matter how you rationalize the act. |
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