Posted on 12/07/2002 5:39:00 AM PST by sauropod
Who is "part of Piscataway?"
It is the citizens of Piscataway. The citizens have authorized there elected city commissioners, alderman, whatever, to represent their interest.
It is obvious that these elected alderman feel no pressure from the citizens of Piscataway to stop this condemnation.
Don't castiage the judge. At minimum the U.S. Constitution, in the Bill of Rights, Amendment V, states, "...nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation." The judge is ruling within constitutional boundaries.
I presume the New Jersey Constitution has a similar amendment.
That being the case, the Halper's property has been declared needed for "public use" and the will be justly "compensated."
But the Halper's need to blame their fellow citizens for allowing their predicament. Their fellow citizens, through their silence, are telling the elected local alderman to use their tax money, compensate the Halper's, and make the propery into a public use area.
Halper's, appeal and get mad at your fellow citizens. They are the ones taking your property away.
The common denominator here is the refusal of the State to acknowledge there are any boundaries that exist within the individual's right to property ownership.
And I would not have been rah=rah for taking property w/ a few pot plants on it either. They could have been planted by anybody.
And that land is worth waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more than $4 million. I remember when that whole area was farmland. Then the developers came in. And people complained about the smell of the manure on other farms. They're farms people. It smells that way!!!
Another case of bad planning in Piscataway. The traffic is horrendous. And this is right near that new construction for Route 18 to get to 287. hmmmm. Sad to see property rights going down the toilet.
My one bone of contention is that the "fair market value" should be equivalent to whatever the owners could have received for the highest and best use for the land, NOT the land's value in its current state. Any lawyer Freepers out there who know how New Jersey law works in this case?
This is why we're condemning farms nowadays? An absolute outrage of the highest degree.
Nobody is trying to shut down this farm -- What the municipality is trying to do is ensure that once the farm ceases to function as a farm, it doesn't get sold off to build another 150 homes on half-acre lots.
Maybe so; then again all of the PDR's I've heard of have the following cast-iron restriction:
-- they would be unable to add any other buildings to their property, or section off some acreage to allow a son to build his own home.
Secondly ... who gets the 'development rights'? There are countless times those 'rights' have been passed around the 'do-gooder' conservation orgs and eventually sold [at a very tidy profit] to a government "for the good of the community".
Eminent Domain, as practiced in this case, is nothing more than legalized theft.
Deus Vult! 'Pod
Uh, hellooooo. In free countries bureaucrats don't get to dictate away someone's rights or condemn property because they get bright ideas about hiking trails.
Do you actually believe they're dealing with density issues when they commit takings like this? Get back to me when you get a clue.
This is a specious argument for if one takes it to its logical conclusion no existing homes and their occupants would currently support the government at this point in time.
Worse, in this particular case, the community will lose the tax base (what is taxable) on this property and forgo any future tax revenue by turning it into a virtual park, except for federal grant money or state support.
If a state had no citizens, the only source of revenue would be travellers who can only travel on guess what? - streets and roads.
This is a clear case of esthetic theft and should be illegal.
I totally agree. I just wonder if individuals aren't doing enough to fight it themselves. If they had kept their land, and then sought a land patent, they might have been able to do more. This way, they've lost the land altogether.
Of course, once the government has decided to take your property, or your money, or your life, there really is nothing you can do to change that. If the property is real estate, you're sunk, but other kinds property can be hidden, and sometime it is necessary to, "dissappear."
Of course, the real problem is most people just have no idea that once they loose property rights, there really aren't any others. In this country, they are pretty well gone, and very few understand that or care.
Hank
In fact, you are absolutely wrong about that. It's called the power of eminent domain, and a government can use that power to take someone's private property to use it for a public purpose. And this power has been used (and abused, of course) for as long as this "free" country has existed. How do you think railroads and highways got built here?
New Jersey is actually one of the better states for eminent domain laws because it requires any such acquired land to be used for a public purpose.
There were two nearly identical court cases in New Jersey and Nevada in the last few years, both of which involved casinos that wanted to have the local government condemn a piece of private property in order to allow the casino to expand. In Nevada, the casino won the case on the grounds that a "compelling public interest" was served by using the power of eminent domain to help the gambling industry. In New Jersey, an 80+ year-old woman fought Donald Trump when he wanted to expand one of his casinos in Atlantic City, and the court ruled in her favor when it decided that there could be no "compelling public interest" in using the power of eminent domain to support any private industry.
Forget about that. I would contend that it is not your property once you connect it to public services such as streets or utilities. If we want to talk technicalities here, then the people in question have the right to do whatever they want with their land, but then the municipality has the right to close off all the streets that access the land. It's difficult to argue about property rights in an age when most property (especially in a state like New Jersey) has zero value without a substantial amount of "public support."
I don't know about this specific case, but many of these "fair market value" proceedings are nothing more than a charade on the part of the property owner. If you do a little research into some of these cases, you'll often find situations where the property owner was forced to sell his land for $200,000, but he fought it in court by contending that the land is actually worth $500,000. Lo and behold! -- a careful look at public records reveals that this same land owner successfully appealed his last tax assessment by claiming that his $250,000 assessment should have been $200,000.
Actions have consequences..
Put fools into office, and have fools running your life..
Semper Fi
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