Posted on 07/04/2005 5:38:17 AM PDT by wallcrawlr
Ten years ago, Ed and Priscilla Salokar reluctantly moved from their 310-acre farm near Wyoming, Minn., to make way for a sewage-treatment plant for the growing area in Chisago County.
The city of Wyoming, which condemned the land for a public purpose, paid the Salokars $816,500 after a two-year court battle. The Salokars started a new life on a farm near Taylors Falls, but they longed for the rolling hills of Wyoming.
"It was devastating to us, to our family, to have to move," recalled Karen Salokar, a daughter-in-law.
That painful parting came back this spring when the Salokars learned that the city of Wyoming reaped $6.9 million after selling a 610-acre site to Polaris Industries for its new research and development facility. Half of the land is their former farm.
Wyoming officials say that all of the Polaris money is going toward a sewer line extension that ties the city into a larger county sewage system. They also say the booming area desperately needed the sewer expansion in the mid-1990s.
Backing up the city's actions is a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a Connecticut case that said local governments could condemn private land for economic-development purposes.
Even so, this is not the first time the Polaris deal has raised the hackles of taxpayers. Wyoming residents complained after Chisago County agreed to close a paved, two-lane county road that passes outside of Polaris' main gate. The R&D facility is also part of the state's controversial JOBZ program, which will give Polaris a break from most taxes for the next 10 years.
For Priscilla Salokar, the news of what's happening to their former land in Wyoming and the death of her husband, Ed, in April have made for a difficult spring.
The old farm "is where our grandkids played," she said about the land the family purchased in 1970. "We wanted to leave it to our sons."
She still can't understand how the city could turn around and sell the land to a private company. The family also knows that there's no investment that could have matched the growth in the land's value since 1995.
"All of a sudden it's a city facility and it's worth millions," said Priscilla Salokar, who declined to be photographed.
The Salokars' story is similar to others that have played out around the nation. The Supreme Court ruling on June 23 involved the city of New London, Conn., which condemned more than 100 homes for a sweeping redevelopment project featuring an elaborate commercial center. Part of New London's justification was that the new project would produce higher tax revenue than the 100 homes.
In the Salokars' case, the city of Wyoming said the public need for the land was clear — its existing sewage-treatment system was simply too small to accommodate the population growth. The fact that it was later sold to Polaris raised a different set of questions.
CONDEMNATION PROCESS
The farm that the Salokars bought just north of Taylors Falls is smaller and not nearly as private as the one in Wyoming, said Priscilla Salokar, now 78. Seated at a kitchen table, with a folder full of paperwork from the court battle 11 years ago, she and daughter-in-law Karen said Ed never wanted to talk about losing the farm once they left.
The Salokars received the first condemnation notice in 1993. The city of Wyoming's first cost appraisal of the property was $322,000, and its first formal offer was $470,000. In today's real estate market, such offers seem low, but even in 1995 they didn't strike the Salokars as fair.
For almost two years, the family and their St. Paul attorney, Patrick Kelly, fought in the courts to get a better deal. Kelly remembers a contentious case between a family who wanted a fair price and a city that wanted the condemnation process to move quickly.
"It was stressful," Priscilla Salokar said.
In the end, in addition to the $816,500, the family received $87,500 in moving expenses, Kelly said.
Today, with land prices skyrocketing in exurban areas such as southern Chisago County, the Salokars would have been multimillionaires if they still owned the land and decided to sell.
Raw, undeveloped land like the Salokars' now commonly sells for $15,000 an acre, which could make the property worth almost $4.7 million today. Ed also had done some construction work over the years, and one of his sons is a developer in Chisago County. Had they chosen to develop the land themselves, they probably could have made much more.
But when Priscilla Salokar talks about the events of the last year, she focuses more about the loss of the farm in 1995 than the loss of any potential financial windfall.
The Salokars were so attached to the place that they moved their white, two-story house from Wyoming to Taylors Falls, but they had to pay $9,000 to buy it back from the city after the condemnation.
Still, they continued to miss little things about the old farm long after they left. Ed had enjoyed the farm's great hunting, she said, because their land was on the border of the Carlos Avery Wildlife Management Area. The family also had fencing professionally installed to hold their livestock. When they moved to the new farm, cattle escaped regularly because the old fencing didn't hold up well.
Since Ed Salokar's death, the family has been trying to get rid of 150 head of cattle.
CITY WANTED SEWAGE PLANT
The elected officials from Wyoming who decided to condemn the Salokars' land in 1994 are all long out of office.
Russ Goudge was on the Chisago County Board of Commissioners at the time but didn't vote on any of the issues related to the Salokars' land. He was involved in planning the sewer expansion and says the city had run out of options by the time it decided to condemn the property.
Wyoming wanted to put a new treatment facility up and discharge into the Sunrise River, he said. But the state Department of Natural Resources opposed that plan, as the river feeds pools that are part of the Carlos Avery area.
The city came up with an alternative to put holding ponds across the road from the Salokar farm. Then, after the sewage had time to break down and settle to the bottom of the various pools, workers would skim water from a pond and spray-irrigate it across the Salokars' property.
That's the way that Wyoming's wastewater has been treated since 1995, said Goudge, who still lives in the area.
Because of growth in the 1990s, the city "was more or less forced into the situation," he said. "You have to meet these sewer needs."
Goudge said he traveled with Wyoming's then-mayor, Neil Gatzow, to Washington, D.C., to meet with federal officials. The city ended up receiving a $1 million federal grant to help with the sewer expansion plan, including the holding ponds. Part of that money covered the city's purchase of the Salokar farm.
During the condemnation fight, "Ed was not happy," Goudge said. "And he was kind of a rough-and-tumble type character to begin with. He wasn't anybody you could push around. I think he did bear it against me for a while."
Though the land was condemned for a public purpose, Goudge doesn't think that intent was lost when the city sold the land to Polaris last year. The $6.9 million that Polaris paid was used by Wyoming to finance a major sewer line extension that connects the area to a larger line leading into Chisago City and Lindstrom. The holding ponds won't be used, and the spray-irrigation on the Salokar land has ended.
"When you tie the whole thing together, it still served the public, it still served the city of Wyoming," Goudge said.
Polaris will use the acreage surrounding its building to test-drive all-terrain vehicles and motorcycles on off-road trails. The topography of the land and the privacy of the site were among the draws for the Medina-based manufacturer.
While the growing area around Wyoming will benefit from hundreds of new jobs at Polaris and from sewer service for area housing developments, it's the way the process played out over 10 years that doesn't sit well with some residents.
"It's not ethical to condemn private property for economic-development purposes," said Ben Montzka, a Wyoming attorney who's on the Chisago County Board of Commissioners. He understands that it's legal, but thinks the right to own private property should trump government powers in situations like the one the Salokars faced.
Asked what she'd tell landowners facing condemnation by a local government, Priscilla Salokar didn't hesitate.
"Get a good attorney right away," she said.
When it does happen, (and it will happen) the black robed clowns who voted for this atrocity need to be held accountable.
Bttt...
thanks, added that to a collection of articles on the kelo scotus ruling:
http://www.neoperspectives.com/scotuspropertythieving.htm
"When you tie the whole thing together, it still served the public, it still served the city of Wyoming," Goudge said.
"Get a good attorney right away," she said.
What a pickle we have put ourselves in. Generations of a family in Japan literally will go by with never hiring an attorney, and I doubt there are too many American families that don't need the services of one at least every few years. Certainly every U.S. company needs their services on a regular basis.
I think our system is expending a foolish amount of money on all of this lawyering. I seriously think legal activity should be removed from our GDP calculations; I don't think that there is anything "productive" about it.
So, what happened to the $6.9 million?
If the city didn't add to the value of the land before selling it for million$ then it seems to me they didn't pay market value for it & owe these people whatever it sold for.
-Hillary Rodham-
Un-freakin'-believable.
Be very, very, very careful who you vote for in your local governments, folks. Now you see why.
Happy Fourth of July!
It is a sad holiday to know that so many gave their blood and lives so that 5 unelected jurists in 2005 could re-write the Constitution.
Which is why the city thinks it was justified in taking the land. They eventually spent the money on public works. Hmmm, so now it's OK to take land, hold it as an investment, sell for profit and claim the money is being used for the public good? That reasoning has all kind of potential.
Under the USSC Kelo decision any government entity anywhere anytime can walk in and take your home and resell at a profit, and there is nothing you can do about it. If the American people will tolerate that kind of outrage without doing something about it they will stand for anything else the government does, and the sky is now the only limit for an oppressive authoritarian government.
I just googled the quote, and nothing came back. I've seen the quote before, and have seen it attributed to The Beast. Though it sounds like something she'd say, at least I believe it does, I'd like to know for sure. Do you have any links to it anywhere?
I remember ...and we need to shout it to the mountains! America needs to know what America's most dangerous woman, Wantabe Hillary Clinton, said, "We will take from you for the good of the people!" Right out of the Communist Manifesto!!
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