The View From The Cheap Seats
By Jerry Haferkamp
I received two correspondences this week, one by phone and one by e-mail that may be of interest to our readers.
The phone call was from a woman who wanted to know if groups like “Do The Right Thing” have to pay $5.00 to park at the Convention Center, as she was asked to do at the craft fair. I told her that I doubted if anyone attending a small gathering there would be required to pay the fee. Like callers to the St. Peters paper, she was also unaware that our city has nothing to do with the fees. They are under the control of the Convention and Sports Authority, who have to answer to no one. Our City had to fight like Hell to even get a seat on the oversight of the Convention Center.
The e-mail was from a businessperson in Frenchtown asking for my support in defeating the proposal to restrict the usage of eminent domain. While this person and I see eye to eye on most issues, I responded that this was an issue on which we would have to agree to disagree.
I am completely in agreement that Frenchtown has serious problems with unsightly properties. I also feel that we, as a City, cannot let this area go downhill. Our disagreement is over the use of eminent domain to force owners out of “seriously blighted” properties. First, eminent domain should not be used to take property from one owner just to financially benefit another. Tossing someone out may improve a neighborhood, but it is morally wrong. Next, who decides what is “serious blight”? The proliferation of used car lots and junk vehicles are surely eyesores, but so are the piles of “junque” piled on the sidewalks in front of some of the shops.
I grew up on South Main. My grandfather owned the house that is presently the New Mother-in-Law House and the two-story home next door. The next home was a duplex owned by my uncle. Our home was next, but is no longer there due to a fire years after we moved. Many areas of South Main were deteriorating at that time. Look at South Main now. It is a restored and beautiful area and I don’t recall the use of eminent domain to achieve these results.
I’m sure there are business owners on both sides of the issue in Frenchtown. If you will financially benefit, I’m sure you would be for eminent domain. If you are threatened with the loss of a business you worked hard to establish, you probably aren’t. I guess it just depends on whose ox is getting gored.
The use of eminent domain may also end up with a result like that in St. Louis County where the developer and city tell folks they have to move. These people then purchase a home with the understanding that theirs is sold, only to have the developer back out and leave them with two mortgages, one on a home that no one in their right mind would buy.
Even if the developer signs a contract, can we expect a City Administrator to enforce it when he won’t even enforce his own?
I feel safe in saying, given the outcry across America, that an overwhelming majority doesn’t want eminent domain used to victimize one individual to increase the bank account (or property value) of another.
As I was preparing to send this column to the FCN, I heard Paul Harvey’s 11:45 news and comment decrying the use of eminent domain to confiscate farmland in the West to enrich those who will mine the copper under it. Land that had been in families for generations is no longer theirs, confiscated by the government to enrich others who had no claim to it. Wrong is wrong, no matter how you paint it.
