EckerNet.Com

Back in August, the Rosemount Port Authority* voted to use eminent domain to steal acquire 0.57 acres of \”downtown\”**. They wanted to steal acquire this land from the current owner because they didn\’t like the way they planned to develop it. So instead they were going to steal acquire it and develop it themselves. So when the owner wouldn\’t sell, they threatened him with eminent domain and planned to just take it. How Stalinist of them.

Faced with the possibility that the city may just take his land, the current owners, Kurt Walter-Hansen and his wife Patricia Walter, decided to reluctantly sell their property to the city. On Dec 13th, they closed the $550,000 deal. While no doubt the city was happy that it had the power to force owners from their land, the former owners were considerably less happy. As the Apple Valley/Rosemount Sun Current reports:

[Kurt Walter-Hansen & Patricia Walter] argue as willing developers that they should be able to do with the land as they please

Actually I wouldn\’t even qualify the statement. As owners they should be able to do with the land as they please. But that aside, I don\’t think their argument is a completely unreasonable request. They own land. They want to develop it and by all accounts it would have met zoning restrictions. So what\’s the problem? Well Rosemount wants to develop it it\’s own way, and rather than do it the capitalist way, they channeled the Soviet Union.

Years back, while sitting around a campfire talking with a few friends enjoying a frosty beverage or twelve, one of them launched into a frustrated rant about how nobody in this country really OWNS land anymore. At best it\’s a leased, although with the slightest transgression the government will take it back from you. I used to think it was a rather cynical way of looking at the world.

I\’m not sure I wasn\’t just naive.

* Does it strike anyone else as dreadfully stupid for a landlocked city, 170 miles from the nearest thing you could call a \”port\”, to have a Port Authority???

** Ok seriously….it\’s freaking Rosemount, there is no \”downtown\”.