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A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

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Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#71

Post by alhirzel »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #6

Whenever possible, conservation land should go into a conservation trust, not to the city, with a conservation easement. Defense in depth. Local government will do whatever is best at the time with whomever is in charge, conservation trusts will optimize to conserve and protect the land. No shame against this family, they and their gift were taken advantage of by their city and its representatives. You don't know wha…

I have been on the board of directors of a land trust, and this situation is a poster-child for why an existent concern must retain standing to litigate. A lot of what the Land Trust Alliance (LTA) does is ensure things like the legal nuts-and-bolts of conservation stays possible and durable, including conservation easements. CEs can be a lot of work, especially as the legal landscape changes. I think the dismissal of this lawsuit is not necessarily a risk to CEs, but could be widened into one in the future. This is the risk that LTA exists to mitigate.

The land trust you work with - are they accredited with LTA?

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#72

Post by jjk166 »

saltcured wrote: post #55
kunai wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah no worries, apart from the facetiousness I'm a pretty YIMBY person un-ironically. But it is infuriating that people adopt YIMBY rhetoric to try and defend data centers and other harmful industrial uses in areas with high land value. It's not only completely counter to the ideals of YIMBYism but also insulting as YIMBY has always been about lowering housing and commercial use costs through heavily relaxed zoning,…

Honestly, it sounds kind of incoherent to me. How do you imagine YIMBY relaxing zoning and allowing things at lower cost and not simultaneously allowing people with money to push through what they want? It sounds more like you are saying YIMBY but imagining MIMBY (maybe in my ...) where you've just replaced those other guys making the decisions with your own cabal?

> How do you imagine YIMBY relaxing zoning and allowing things at lower cost and not simultaneously allowing people with money to push through what they want?

Relaxing zoning laws never meant throwing them completely out the window. It has always been a matter of pruning zoning rules that overly restrict land use to the point that minor deviation from the norm is impossible.

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#73

Post by ghaff »

jvanderbot wrote: post #65
Aunche wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a tax loophole where you buy a lot of land and donate 90% of it to the government to be "public parkland". However, in actuality, you're the only person who has convenient access to this land and nobody else can build there, so you get nearly all the benefits of this land while claiming a big tax deduction. It doesn't sound like what is happening here, but I don't think you should be able to block developmen…

Yeah at that point it should be in a perpetual trust or some other holding co who can fend off the city. Never trust your neighbors with your stuff.

Basically you need to pay a lawyer to set up a trust which requires trustees if you care or donate to an institution with their own lawyers who you trust with a presumably long institutional timeline.

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#74

Post by dylan604 »

jvanderbot wrote: post #65
Aunche wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a tax loophole where you buy a lot of land and donate 90% of it to the government to be "public parkland". However, in actuality, you're the only person who has convenient access to this land and nobody else can build there, so you get nearly all the benefits of this land while claiming a big tax deduction. It doesn't sound like what is happening here, but I don't think you should be able to block developmen…

Yeah at that point it should be in a perpetual trust or some other holding co who can fend off the city. Never trust your neighbors with your stuff.

This sounds like the better approach. Create a trust that runs a private park open to the public. This prevents the city from owning the land. The trust can also work out a deal with the city for tax benefits for running the park. The trust can also be set up so that a family member is always given an overriding voice while allowing the city to submit plans for proposed use, upgrades, permitting, etc.

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#75

Post by Glyptodon »

dwohnitmok wrote: post #19
Glyptodon wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did the suit get dismissed? Local good ol boys doing the K-Drama USA dance?

My guess is standing. The family bringing the suit is not the family that donated the land.

So deed restrictions are unenforceable then?

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#76

Post by projektfu »

coredog64 wrote: post #13
helterskelter wrote: post #3

Wow they had the condition that the land be used as a park baked into the deed when they sold it to the city for $10, the city sold it, and when the family went to court their suit was dismissed. Now their home is worthless because nobody wants to live next to a data center. When are we going to hold local government officials accountable for bullshit like this? Send them to prison.

Is it true that it was sold for $10? There’s a common phrase in Texas deed transfers similar to the below which just means “The sale price is none of your business” Common Texas boilerplate: That for and in consideration of ten dollars ($10.00), cash in hand paid, and other good and valuable considerations, the receipt and sufficiency of which are hereby acknowledged, the Grantor has bargained and sold, and does here…

Even more bizarre, the $10 cash never changes hands.

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#77

Post by Glyptodon »

jmyeet wrote: post #22
Glyptodon wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did the suit get dismissed? Local good ol boys doing the K-Drama USA dance?

I've been trying to find this out. I suspect it was dismissed because they lacked standing. Because there were a bunch of transfer, likely only the last seller has standing to sue for ignoring a deed restriction and of course they don't care. That's not absolute. There can be other cases where you have standing even if you aren't involved in the transaction but those cases are limited. Now it's also possible that the…

Yeah, there's no point to deed restrictions if the average person doesn't have standing to do anything about them.

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#78

Post by dylan604 »

triceratops wrote: post #67
miltonlost wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public parks should not be developed on for the sake of the community. We need wild areas.

We need wild areas in the community ? Why? Let the wild be in the wild.

It's farm land. Sounds pretty wild to me. Also, we have wild land set up as parks as in national/state parks. A park doesn't have to mean slides/swings and a bunch of ankle biters running around.

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#79

Post by wahern »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #56
Aunche wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a tax loophole where you buy a lot of land and donate 90% of it to the government to be "public parkland". However, in actuality, you're the only person who has convenient access to this land and nobody else can build there, so you get nearly all the benefits of this land while claiming a big tax deduction. It doesn't sound like what is happening here, but I don't think you should be able to block developmen…

>There is a tax loophole where you buy a lot of land and donate 90% of it to the government to be "public parkland". However, in actuality, you're the only person who has convenient access to this land While I'm sure that's happened once or twice and serves as great fodder to get people of a certain ideological bent riled up, for the most part nobody is giving government land that's worth a shit. They're doing it to…

It's actually a pretty common thing: https://www.propublica.org/article/conservation-easements-th...

It even sprouted a cottage industry of REITs selling investors a product built around it, syndicated conservation easements: https://www.propublica.org/article/syndicated-conservation-e...

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#80

Post by Glyptodon »

arjie wrote: post #43
helterskelter wrote: post #3

Wow they had the condition that the land be used as a park baked into the deed when they sold it to the city for $10, the city sold it, and when the family went to court their suit was dismissed. Now their home is worthless because nobody wants to live next to a data center. When are we going to hold local government officials accountable for bullshit like this? Send them to prison.

It was unclear from this summary but there are a few parties here: the original farmer A, the neighbouring family B, the city C, and the datacenter builder D. A sold to C with the deed restriction C sold to D without the restriction B tried to sue to stop D from building the datacenter, but B has no standing. Okay, that makes sense. It seems to me that A or C has standing, but not B. And depending on the way it's wri…

So there are two issues: (c) shouldn't be able to sell without the restriction, and (b) knowing of the restriction made decisions in good faith believing it would be followed and hence have been harmed by it not being followed, no? If (b) doesn't have standing, nobody does and deed restrictions are de facto useless.
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