My Experience with Eminent Domain-Yes on 90

NOW | Me

[agooga]

This is the text of an email I sent to my best, uber-liberal friend.

Dear, Xxx:

You sent an email to me several weeks ago telling me why Prop. 90 was a bad idea. I ask you to read this as a response:

Over forty years ago my dad and a business parter named Otis Thompson (not the real name, FReepers) bought a piece of property in Port Townsend to use as a fuel storage lot. It happened that this property was located on a prime piece of waterfront real estate on the point near downtown.

After they went out of business, the real estate sat unused and undeveloped for decades.

It was not unused because dad and Mr. Thompson could not afford to do anything with it, or could not afford the remediation that would be necessary to use it or anything of the sort. And it was not sold to a developer-- for a very key reason:

The city of Port Townsend wanted the property for themselves.

Port Townsend has had a very liberal governing body for decades and the story has always been the same through subsequent iterations of the council: they blocked the usage and set unfair restrictions on the property making it practically undevelopable.

My dad and Mr. Thompson brought design after design to the council for many years hoping to get approval for various projects from hotels to condos to retail spaces. All were rejected for various reasons. Finally, they gave up.

During that whole time, the city had been offering to buy the property from them.

Had my father been able to sell the property to a developer for commercial or upscale residential usage, the property, being arguably one of the best and most unique on the entire Olympic Penninsula, might have sold for between four or five million dollars.

As it stood, the offer from the city was for less than $800,000.

When my father became ill, he and Mr. Thompson, who was much older, retired and in need of money, reluctantly consented to the offer. Dad told me that after he died and the deal bacame finalized that I was to receive my share-- about $150,000. And that's the total that I received from my dad's estate, nothing else.

After he died, the city could not afford to pay the full amount, so they began making small payments for about four years, until they finally had enough to payoff the whole thing-- and for those four long years, Mr. and Mrs. Thompson could not even take advantage of the full amount of their share.

Currently the property is slowly being developed into the Northwest Maritime Heritage Museum-- a project which will probably take years to complete because it is being funded by little state and federal grants and private donations.

You would think the moronic city politicians would be hungry for the tax revenues that a condo or retail enterprise would accrue, but they are SO stupid that they steal property for a venture that no one gives a rip about, no one is willing to pay for and will net the city nothing in tax or tourist revenue.

So, if you read this whole thing, when you ink your card NO for prop 90, tomorrow, remember the people (like me, my sister and the Thompsons) who are routinely screwed by their self-serving, incompetent governments out of what is rightfully theirs.

Just think about that when you ink your vote, that's all I ask.

Respectfully,

Me

[agooga]

This amendment must pass so that these abominations of freedom will stop. Today California-- tomorrow the nation.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Thanks for the update.

[agooga]

(That should be "abonimations TO freedom")

[agooga]

Oh, god, just shoot me.

(Yes, I know spell check is my friend...)

[longtermmemmory]

price manipulation through regulation is just as much a taking as anything else.

The "city hall" routinly depresses prices with these stunts.