Incentives are as follows:
Renters would receive $5,250. Business owners would be paid fair market value plus $10,000.
Homeowners would receive a flat rate of $22,500 in addition to fair market value.
Limited moving expenses were also included in the package. But those were only available to people who didn't take their cases to court.
The number of condemnations, however, suggests that the incentives weren't effective in many cases.
Mr. Rivera said condemnations are inevitable no matter what incentives the city gives.
"In these types of cases, there are always going to be those who will hold out for additional dollars," the council member said.
Attorney Bob Cohen, who is representing some of the property owners, said the city gave many of his clients little incentive to sell.
He said he represents the owners of some rental properties who were counting on that monthly revenue for their retirement.
Most homeowners can't afford to re-build or buy in that area with this incentive package.
If this statement is true; then, by definition, the city is not offering fair market value.
It is my contention that the government has a responsibility to always provide just compensation to property owners without regard to the sophistication/intelligence level of the property owner. This is regularly not the case. To get anywhere near just compensation, property owners are usually forced to hire lawyers and go to court. Those property owners who are less sophisticated will often end up accepting a fleecing from the government.
The constitution says, "no one will be deprived of property without just compensation". IMO, this means no one should ever have to take the govt. to court to get a fair price.
Of course, this is not a valid use of eminent domain in the first place.
The key thing is that no legislature ever voted to permit the "state" to seize these properties. The law that permitted what is being called eminent domain granted seizure powers only in the case that the land was condemned. So the "state" (actually Jerry Jones, of course) is taking property by condemning the land. In other words, by ruling that the land is unfit to be dwelled in.
Once authority is given to a state to seize a land based on conditions set by that state, the state will inevitably be corrupted by that authority. THAT is why the founding explicitly denied the state that authority. It was NOT because it was concerned about people being asked to sacrifice for the good of the state. If it truly were for the greater good, then the state seizure of personal property could be justified. The issue is that the founding fathers recognized that states were not God; they were inherently corruptible. Thus freedoms and protections are granted to individuals, not because they believed that it was good that individuals did bad. That belief would be simply illogical. Rather, they believed that the state possessing such authority to determine for others what was good or bad would be corrupted by such authority, and thus the good of the many would be destroyed as well. And so the founding fathers created a system which sought the common good by ensuring that the manifold pursuit of individual interests led to the common good.