“I am sure there is a slice of your own property that could be forcibly taken from you too, described in a similar fashion.”
that’s actually true for ALL property owners: eminent domain for all levels of government stems from The Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which contains the Takings Clause, that allows the federal government to take private property for public use if the government provides “just compensation.”
Almost all governmental bodies, including Federal, State, County, City, and certain governmental districts constituted by one of the above have the absolute right to exercise eminent domain, that is, taking private property for public use.
State Constitutions all have similar clauses.
The absolute right of the government to take property for public use is never in dispute (except when the government oversteps and tries to take land for private use). What is also never in dispute is that the government can take the property prior to payment, if prior agreement cannot be reached regarding “just compensation”.
What CAN be in dispute is “just compensation”. Frequently, but not always, the property owner simply wants to stall the takings process and/or extort the governmental body for more than the property is worth.
As a former city councilman who was occasionally involved in such property takings for projects like road construction and utility easements, our government could almost always reach a satisfactory valuation with the owner. The way we did this (and i think most governments do) is to use an independent arbitration body composed of independent professional property assessors appointed by each side to determine just compensation.
Almost always this would result in an non-adversarial outcome, but rarely a property owner was recalcitrant and sought to stall and/or extort. At that point, we would threaten immediate taking (something we always sought to avoid if at all possible), and almost always the recalcitrant owner would suddenly reach agreement for just compensation prior to taking. In fact, I can’t remember a single case where we actually had to take property prior to agreement, though we could have if we absolutely had to.
Just don’t make it sound like you are doing them a personal favor by taking it from them by force.
That’s my objection.