If you have no land available for a desperately needed new school, for example, and the only available acreage of any size is a chunk of farmland, THAT might be considered a "compelling interest."
But the fact is, from what I can see here (and I'm not familiar at all with this situation outside of what 'Pod has posted), it looks like the city of Piscataway is in the grip of Eco-freaks who all of a sudden, living on the East Coast, realized that there are a lot of people around and they think they need "nature." So they used this pretext that these people MIGHT sell to a developer as an excuse to condemn the land.
In the first place, it was only hearsay. In the second place, even if a developer DID buy the land to develop homes, the city has every right to expect the developer to come up with a plan to provide infrastructure and services to the development, so this is a red herring as well.
Cities in MY experience LIKE to have developed areas. Developed land pays higher tax rates, and economy of means leads to lower costs for services per capita.
The Lefties are lying through their teeth about this whole thing. That's my take on it. Here's hoping justice can be done on appeal.
The application died in August when the Halpers rejected an offer of slightly more than $3 million for the development rights for their farm, and the township restarted the condemnation.
Wahler said then and again yesterday that he did not understand why the Halpers rejected the offer since they could have kept the farm in perpetuity or, if they later decided to sell, could do so for market value to someone else who wanted to operate the farm.
In this case, I do not know what the complaint actually is. They could have kept their property, done whatever they wanted, except develop it commercially, and have received $3 million to boot.
I beleive that they should have been able to develop the land, if they wished, in this case it is not what they said they planned to do.
I don't think they should loose their land even now, but it seems they had a good deal going if they really only wanted to keep the land.
What do you think?
(Still agree their property rights have definitely been violated.)
Hank
Yeah. I understand your point. Huge difference there.