http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_flight93_memorial;_ylt=AuMyatGF6ZGmIQL5INngin_Zn414
This is wrong.
Taking land from people to build a memorial by just condemning it, with a cost of 58 million to build??
Come on!
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3 comments:
I agree that a 500 acre park commemorating September 11 is too much. I think that we should put the brakes on a lot of the September 11 stuff anyway, but that's just me. So I don't think this park serves a good public purpose.
It is probably constitutional to take the land. To meet the test the taking must be for a public purpose and the owner must receive just compensation. Parks, like the interstate highway system, were created from private lands that were taken for public use. The owners are paid, and of course they don't think the compensation was sufficient. Due process requires that the government provide an appeals process when you think you received inadequate compensation. There is probably an administrative proceeding and a judicial proceeding. It is important that you follow the rules. For example, if Georgia condemns your property you have a very short time to appeal the condemnation or you lose you right to appeal either with the agency or in the court. Bad stuff, pay attention.
Sometimes the litigation is about whether the use is public. In New London, Connecticut a few years ago the city took a neighborhood to sell to a developer to build a business district. The homeowners said that's not a public use and sued. The Court held that the business district would better serve the community than the current homes, so the taking was constitutional. It's not clear why this was such a controversial decision because the court had held the same thing twenty years before in a similar case. Certainly a park is more a public use than a business district, so the September 11 memorial taking is constitutional.
Really this is a political question. We have what appears to be an expensive, controversial project that the locals don't want. It was started by the previous administration, maybe when remembering September 11 was more popular. Now Obama's guys have to decide whether to continue the project, piss off the property owners, then be perceived as a taker. Or they can end the project and risk being painted as not sufficiently remembering September 11. It's a tough choice, but hey, that's their job. If it were me I would cancel the project.
Why not just put a simple monument on the land and let it be? They have that one at Chicopee for the plane that crashed there, gives mountain bikers pause to stop and reflect.
Not that we should forget the victims of 9-1-1, but this project isn't really best serving the nation as a whole and is too costly.
Your idea is the best idea.
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