[Daveinyork]

What the article does not mention is that the county has put preservation easement on the property so that the county cannot sell the land to a developer to recover the cost of the judgement.

The developer got justice, the preservation whackos still got their way, as usual, and, as usual, the taxpayers got screwed.

[Wolfie]

IF the taxpayers are paying attention (doubful), they’ll have their say in the next election.

[DannyTN]

Hmmm, I’m wondering if that will impact eminent domain decisions or if public officials will condemn anyway.

Enough decisions like this might slow the eminent domain advocates, but it’s still other’s people money they are dealing with.

[WakeUpAndVote]

Great, my friggin’ county taxes are going to go up again!

[Tolkien]

The county, like our federal government is composed of robber Barons.... and we keep putting them in office!

[Abathar]

"You people just never learn do you? The government is NOT our friend."

[muawiyah]

Still, given the way real estate has been going in 2007 and 2008 if the county had left the guy alone and he'd started development, he'd be bankrupt by now with about 15% of the houses he had planned in some stage of construction, and no one would be bidding on the houses, or the land.

In short, by letting market forces rather than eminent domain figure out what the highest and best use was for the land it'd be available for the cost of a box of matches and $1.00 to turn into a park.

The county would have saved everything it misspent on the place too!