A success story on eminent domain, with a favorable ending coming about today. Too often, stories don’t get reported once the tiger retreats. That won’t happen here.
County School System Threatens to Seize Private School Land by Eminent Domain [Free log-in may be required]
Colorful balloons bobbed in the breeze. A huge banner reading “The Weber School” lay across a backhoe. A large tent teemed with people eating cake.
The groundbreaking ceremony Sunday afternoon was supposed to celebrate the start of construction of the private Jewish high school’s 18-acre campus in Sandy Springs.
Instead, a mood of uncertainty and apprehension mixed with the hot late-summer air as parents and school officials grappled with the realization that all the plans they’ve made may be in jeopardy.
The Fulton County school system wants to buy the Weber School site and use the land to build a new elementary school. In a strongly worded letter sent earlier this month, the school district indicated that unless Weber sold the property by today, the school board would use eminent domain to obtain the land.
Weber’s 158 students now attend school in a cluster of portable classroom buildings in Dunwoody. The new facility would have athletic fields, a gym and room for 500 students.
What’s wrong with this picture? Seizing private school property to build a public school? Does anyone smell a rat? Today, after the local newspaper reports the plans to invoke eminent domain, the authorities retreat. Either the county was bluffing or was afraid of the backlash. Either way:
At approximately 5:00 PM this evening James Wilson, The Superintendent of the Fulton County Board of Education wrote the Weber School to inform us that they were not going to proceed with their plans to purchase our property utilizing their right of eminent domain.
Good. Somehow I don’t think that the spirit of the 5th Amendment encompasses seizing somebody’s school property because you’d rather have your government school there instead.
Congratulations to those who fought and won.
I’m mostly liberal in my poiitics but when these land seizures happen, my conservative streak comes out. I USED to admire the conservatives for their advocacy of individual rights. But then what happened? Now it is often the CONSERVATIVES who support the taking of private property… witness the recent New London ruling by the supreme court. I had to admit that I took a little guilty please when those guys tried to seize David Souters home to build a hotel.
Hey, at least the property would be used for the public, instead of being given to some corporation. Not that I would approve of such either move. To me the point of public domain is for roads, railroad tracks, and cables and lines.
Since there is no way a corporation could buy enough property to build roads across the US, the government should have the power to do so. But that’s it. No property grabs for parks, no property grabs for stadiums, and certainly not for third party corporations. Everything else should be left to the market. If a city wants a park, its residents should pay what the market actually dictates, not what some judge decides is a “fair market value.”
Justice actually being just? This should be front page news on CNN, USAToday, MSNBC, Fox etc.
The problem with this case is that no rich group of investers really wanted the property.
After all NEO-CON government theory says government only works best when you take a mans proprerty and give it to a contributor of the duhbya.
To re-quote Ann Ryand – “Take from the needy and give to the greedy”.
This was not good publicity for a public school. I wonder how many churches will be seized under this ruling.
Read the reason for taking Souter’s home. This is interesting to read.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45029
I applaud this to get back at someone who made such a stupid decision even though it probably won’t be followed through to the fullest extent. Hope this guy never has a case in which Souter is the deciding vote.
Here’s a judge who snubbed the Supreme Court’s “New London” ruling:
http://www.azcapitoltimes.com/main.asp?SectionID=2&SubSectionID=2&ArticleID=2507
This judge is right. “Profit, not public improvement is the motivating force for this development”. Private developers are motivated by profit.
GregAllen, pay no attention to Howard Dean on this. The votes on the Supreme Court for seizure came from Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter, Stevens, and Kennedy. Admittedly 3 of those 5 are Republican appointees, but so were all 4 of the dissenters, while both Democrat appointees supported it.
While I agree that Eminent Domain should not be used to enrich private interests, I can think of several reasons to use it for the public good.
Creating parks? Too often people have built on flood plains and refuse to leave. Expropriating the land and using it to create parks, which would be flood buffers, is warranted.
Historical Interest Sites? Leaving historical sites to private interests is counterproductive. Two cases in point are the Alamo in Texas and Gettysburg Battle Site in Pennsylvania. Both are critical moments in American history, are diminished and demeaned by the commercial activities surrounding them. Also smaller, “person X lived here”, could be for the public good to avoid non-reversible conversions and alterations or even demolition.
Land uses that might not be amiable to the current conditions. Something like an animal feed lot or farm might not fit into current neighborhood, which has grown up around it. Or an older industry that produces obnoxious odors.
Land that causes harm. A piece of land that causes flooding to adjoining areas is one area.
In general though, any expropriation by Eminent Domain should only be for the public good and will benefit the public more then the current usage. Usages for things like Stadiums, expanding or creating industrial zones, or for creating private housing should be strictly forbidden.
Some additional input:
The Weber School is in Sandy Springs which is in Fulton County. For years the Sandy Springs residents complained that they were paying much more in taxes than they cost in services such as police and fire protection. They felt their excess taxes were being used to subsidize those services in south Fulton County. Recently, Sandy Springs won a court decision that said Sandy Springs could vote on whether to incorporate themselves or not. Fulton County Commissioners, of course, fought against it. A recent vote was held and the citizens voted to incorporate.
Maybe this eminent domain threat was an attempt at payback on the residents of Sandy Springs?
This is the time of year when disbursements are made according to student enrollment. They wait a few weeks after school begins to get everyone back from vacation and allow any classroom transfers to complete.
In this case the timing is suspect to induce those placing their children in private school to rethink the possibility that the school will cease to exist. Thereby increasing the state allotments to the public schools if students are placed there. In some situations this comes at the expense of special education funds to private schools, thereby reducing thier funding as well.
This is inevitable whenever there is a designated monopoly.
Public good is not enough. That was the logic behind Kelo. It has to be for a public purpose. Historical interest sites tend to be misused by people wanting to take over someone else’s land.