Real Estate & Property Law

Citizens pay themselves for condemnation

By Alan Ackerman

The citizens of the Drainage District will be required to pay their own Resource Recovery Authority, which they are apart of, in order to obtain property.  In this interesting article, one finds a locally elected public official at a loss to understand why outside counsel needs to be retained.  Quite simply, in-house counsel and many government organizations do not have the specialized expertise to acquire property through the eminent domain process in an expeditious or economic fashion.  Especially in a case where a drain commission is involved, the in-house expertise frequently only deals with construction issues and corporate structure. 

The Daily Tribune

    "The budget for the GWK Drainage District is $21 million," Photiades said, "and Ferndale alone pays 10.3 percent of that."

The irony is that nearly all SOCRRA member communities are being threatened with condemnation litigation by a governmental entity they pay millions of dollars for, Photiades said.

"We are paying at both ends," he said.

Joseph Colaianne, a county attorney for the WRC, said the commission had to hire outside attorneys to work on possible condemnation proceedings against SOCCRA.

Colaianne said the need for a traffic light entrance to handle golf course traffic is a public safety issue and it makes no sense for the county to invest in engineering and construction costs if SOCRRA can simply void an easement whenever it chooses.

Full post as published by National Eminent Domain Blog on June 11, 2010 (boomark / email).