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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

#161

Post by xyst »

FpUser wrote: post #46
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.

>"Send them to prison" Dream of my life to see politicians to be personally responsible for fuckups they cause to people.

Politicians are just foot soldiers/weeds in this game. Pluck one corrupt politician. 2 more grow in its place.

I would like the billionaires to be jailed, their political pawns in government removed from office, Citizens United to be nullified, FEC regulations re-worked from ground up, and codified.

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

#162

Post by tptacek »

mrhottakes wrote: post #117
waynecochran wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the legal precedent for this statement? I am not disagreeing, I just would like to know what the law is.

There isn't a single precedent; standing and jurisdiction are like 70% of civil procedure in law school. This page is a good jumping off point: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/standing

Right, standing seems like a series of technicalities until you realize it's fundamentally what keeps judges from becoming philosopher-kings that control the entire rest of the government: judges only exercise power in actual cases and controversies between formally-identified parties.

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

#163

Post by culi »

alex0015 wrote: post #145

What I'm seeing from the article is that the land is 87 acres and the data center is going to take up ~4 of them. Perhaps with the extra $3 million a year in tax revenue the city could build a park too. The article didn't really convince me that the homes are going to be significantly devalued or that people are going to be thrust into poverty. It says so, and dismisses out of hand claims to the opposite, but doesn't…

The full 87 acres were donated to the nonprofit Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation. The city sold 53 acres for $10 million to the developer. In addition:

> The Taylor City Council and the EDC are giving Blueprint a 50% rebate on property taxes for 10 years on each of the three phases of construction for the $1 billion project. In addition, the company would get a 50% rebate on local sales-and-use tax collected on construction material purchases.

https://www.taylorpress.net/article/10705

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

#165

Post by fsckboy »

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…

"standing" is a made-up concept with a fairly short history. Remember how we look back at the early part of the 20th century as being filled with virtuous people at every level of industry and govt? me neither:

The modern U.S. doctrine of standing traces back to mid-20th-century Supreme Court cases that crystallized the “injury in fact,” causation, and redressability triad, but its roots lie in early 20th-century rulings such as Fairchild v. Hughes (1920) that first linked federal judicial power to a plaintiff’s concrete injury.

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

#167

Post by burnt-resistor »

nativeit wrote: post #2

Tangentially related: https://youtu.be/F4SmgrAmdUQ “When nothing belongs to everyone, the rich will own everything, including the rebellions against them,”

Unincorporated areas of London that were previously shared informally were commodified and transferred to the rich roughly around the 19th century, depriving commoners of them and gradually pushed them out.

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

#168

Post by adjejmxbdjdn »

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…

Are B not part of the city?

Why wouldn’t they have standing on an action by their government?

(This is a genuine question, not a rhetorical one).

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

#169

Post by burnt-resistor »

bigp3t3 wrote: post #112
nativeit wrote: post #2

Tangentially related: https://youtu.be/F4SmgrAmdUQ “When nothing belongs to everyone, the rich will own everything, including the rebellions against them,”

Tragedy of the commons, re-framed

https://www.hamptonthink.org/read/the-myth-of-the-tragedy-of...

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

#170

Post by pessimizer »

everforward wrote: post #120
waynecochran wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the legal precedent for this statement? I am not disagreeing, I just would like to know what the law is.

It would generally be the opposite, what law gives them standing to sue? My knowledge as a non-lawyer generally agrees with above, most states won’t allow you to sue for neighbors doing something legal that decreases your property value (CA is the exception I’m aware of, and even then it’s a “sometimes” kind of thing). I’m not even sure who they’d sue. Presuming the land is zoned for a datacenter, the datacenter is a…

> neighbors doing something legal

The question is about doing something illegal, such as removing a covenant that was involved in a sale when reselling? If it is something that could have been objected to by the original seller (they would have had standing to sue) and they have not agreed to change the covenant (because they are dead), it seems as if anyone affected should be able to sue.

The breaking of the covenant is what is being sued over.

> Presuming the land is zoned for a datacenter, the datacenter is allowed to do datacenter things.

If my house is zoned for a possible datacenter, that doesn't mean that anyone can build a datacenter there - it is still my house. If there is a covenant that says that the land will be a park, that's the "zoning" by the seller being stricter than local zoning, which means that it also conforms to local zoning.

The zoning doesn't say "The land must be a datacenter."

edit: It would be bizarre if we can sue over terms of service as if they constitute law, but we couldn't sue over terms of sale. I can sue Facebook if they allow another user to violate their terms of service.

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