In 1999, a farmer gave away 87 acres of land to a small Texas city to use as a park. The city sold to a data center developer for $10 million.
  • cogman@lemmy.worldEnglish
    592·
    18 days ago

    One of the more fucked up aspects of eminent domain. City/county/state governments can nuke deeds by using eminent domain. It allows them to turn a plot of land, regardless prior restrictions, into things like dumps.

    The fucked up part about it is they can also turn public lands into private lands with that same trick.

    What’s frustrating is we still need eminent domain for good. It’s basically the only way to build railways and roads. It even ends up being one of the few ways to deploy things like district heating/cooling and new fiber lines.

    • PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      18 days ago

      I believe eminent domain should have a very limited scope legally and should mostly only be used for public infrastructure projects and housing honestly…

    • NocturnalMorning@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      18 days ago

      We have different definitions of good. I don’t see how building a highway system through other animals homes is considered “good”.

  • Brem@lemmy.worldEnglish
    30·
    18 days ago

    I was curious where the land was, and if I could help in any way.

    It’s in Texas. I made a promise to myself that I’d never go back to Texas.

    Texas. Fucking. Suuuuuucks.

  • HotsauceHurricane@lemmy.worldEnglish
    20·
    18 days ago

    I know the saying is “don’t mess with Texas” but Texas seems to fuck itself over all the time. I would be raising hell about this if it was my backyard.

    • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
      English
      171·
      17 days ago

      404 Media is journalist-founded and supported by reader subscriptions. They are four high quality investigators doing amazing work (they work with a couple of other people on some stories).

      If you can’t afford it, I understand. I share archive links all the time. For anyone with a few extra bucks who cares about quality reporting by people with integrity, this is easily one of the best options around. I’ve been extremely happy knowing they exist. (Gets you extra content from their podcast, too.)

      • Syrc@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        17 days ago

        I generally hate the principle of subscriptions + ads + paywalling stuff to viewers but not to crawlers, it’s pretty much double-dipping while baiting people for SEO.

        On the other hand, I understand that in this day and age keeping a news outlet afloat without “outside influence” requires doing stuff like this. It’s a hard thing to balance but in either case I appreciate the insight from your comment, I admit I didn’t look them up and I figured they were just another money-hungry megacorp-owned outlet.

        • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
          English
          2·
          14 days ago

          And I have no problem with that. I sort of found out who they were by accident cause they had a trend of good stories getting posted here and at some point I auditioned their podcast where they mention that.

  • NottaLottaOcelot@lemmy.caEnglish
    8·
    17 days ago

    I’m curious what would be the better approach if someone wanted to donate land to be used for a park? Give it to a charity? Or somehow find the cash and just build the park yourself and let people visit your land?

    • ITGuyLevi@programming.devEnglish
      19·
      17 days ago

      My town had a guy that loved baseball a long time ago, he had money and wanted it local so he built a baseball field right on the river, made a big park and donated it to the city. He was pretty smart about it and worked the deed so that it would take a two-third vote of the citizens to sell it.

      Fast forward to a couple of years ago and the mayor petitioned the governor to change the deed under an NDA as he wanted to lease the park to a minor league baseball team. In the deal he also gave them the naming rights for the park, so the baseball team renamed the park after a local bank that gave them money.

    • MrNesser@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      17 days ago

      Depends how it was dontated, you can specify a loan of the land indefinetly to the city as long as its use is xyz.

      If its a straight donation with no caveats attached then the city can do what it wants

      My local council tried to build on some park land donated 100 years ago but the donator had specified its usage in the donation so they got shut down pretty hard.

      • Syrc@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        17 days ago

        Unfortunately it seems like the donator specified the usage in this case as well, but the courts are straight up ignoring it.

        On July 7, 1999, Bland’s descendants granted 87.97 acres of land to the “Texas Parks and Recreation Foundation, a Texas non-profit corporation, to be held in trust for future use as parkland by Williamson County, Texas,” according to a copy of the deed reviewed by 404 Media.