From yesterday's News-Gazette:
Five property owners who have yet to sell their land to the city for the Boneyard Creek Second Street detention project could be faced in coming months with eminent domain lawsuits to take their property.
The city council will be asked Tuesday night to allow the city manager to file eminent domain lawsuits against the five property owners, if the property owners do not sell to the city within 60 days of receiving a final offer.
Discuss.
How dare they not obey the city... The police should take their house and give them nothing for their impudence
Sounds like a classic public works use of emminent domain. It's not like a giant ditch is going to generate sales and property taxes.
Right---because before the Dentention Basin was built we had multi-level structures going up in Campustown. Oh wait, no we didn't.
And before the detention basin was built, we saw people improving their properties in the campustown area. Oh wait, no we didn't.
Why? Because it flooded regularly. My car was flooded twice---once at Third and Springfield and once on Second St. I've even seen people bust out canoes and canoe down Green St. during floods. At Fourth and Green, it would be several *feet* deep during a heavy downpour because the water had no where to go. And I'm not talking about 40 days of rain. I'm talking about a heavy downpour for about 30 minutes.
Also---you don't get *nothing* when eminent domain is used. You get paid for you property. My guess? Those people's property are worth a lot more with detention basin than without because the land is actually usable---and two of the parcels are vacant lots. It's not like those lots are generating sales tax.
I wasn't objecting to the basin or the use of ED. I was trying to say that it isn't like some of the objectionable cases where a city uses ED to pave the way for commercial development by getting rid of old houses. In one case they actually took land that was going to become a church and put up shopping instead. Improving drainage is a perfect us of ED.