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I can make accurate pronouncements based on the photos.

The Bixby house has had low ceiling room added to the rear. The next door house has had the garage converted to a room. The stone house with the cathederal windows is most telling. Here you can see, on the front of the home, a vertical HVAC discharge duct that elbows into the attic. That duct is likely 18 gauge and is acting as support column. To the left of it you can see where the corner of the house has settled and above the duct there is a large crack where the roof and the eave attach.

From the article we know that Bixby bought the house in '94. I would suggest that at the time he bought the house, the road was already a traffic jam and anyone with common sense would conclude that the road would be widened eventually. Futhermore, in '94 the planning commission had likely already published their intent to widen the road. Municipal projects of this nature generally lag 15-20 years behind time.

Was Bixby taking a financial hit on this? Not hardly. Any loss of value as owner-occupied residential would not apply to the property as a rental unit. Addionally, the widening of the road would hasten the commercial value of the property, which will always be higher than residential.

These men are kooks and anyone that condones their actions are also kooks.

BTW, did you know that there were cuniform tablets unearthed that document the fact that when the irrigation canals were built in Sumer 6000 years ago, some of the property owners had their land condemned?

Good post. I am a Civil Engineer consultant who has posted on this forum several times about what really happens on public works projects. It is far different from what most of the people here believe. And I have been flamed for that.

I like your irrigation canals example. I did not go back that far, but I have read the Magna Carta and there were items concerning condemned land there, too. What it looks like to me (from the photos) is that there may have been temporary construction easements needed to slope the roadside ditch on a 3:1 slope. If so, that means he did not give up any land at all.

The people here who say that land is stolen (if it is condemned at all) bother me. They have no idea what they are talking about. Condemnation tries to balance the rights of both sides. Those who want to do away with that want to shaft the taxpayer or make dangerous roads.

I was involved in a project in a floodplain. The people there were flooded about every 5 years for as long as anyone could remember. They kept wanting the other "taxpayers" to build them a dam and levees to keep the water out. A study was done and it was decided that it would cost far, FAR less to buy the people out.

Since the houses were essentially worthless, the Feds required that they be paid what a similar sized house would cost if it wasn't subject to flooding, did not have extensive water damage, fungus, and rot. In other words, far over "Fair Market Value". Then there was moving, temporary housing, taxes, etc that were also paid. Some of the people tripled their net worth by being bought out (or you could say, for being stupid enough to buy where everyone knew it was going to be flooded). But some still wanted more.

The taxpayers deserve some protection, too, if it is decided by elected officials that this is what we should pay for. If someone doesn't want that to be paid for, they should work to elect officials who don't vote for this kind of thing.

Unfortunately, I have worked with Conservative politicians and Liberal politicians. When it comes to pork for their constituents, there is absolutely NO DIFFERENCE between them.