No good deed goes unpunished
Nor unviolated, in this case
A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center
391–400 of 574 posts
Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center
#392Earlier quoted context omitted.
So a city should tie its hands permanently because of a gift? Donations can now override city planning? Tired of paying property tax? Gift your house to the city with a deed that says they have to rent it back to you forever for $1 a year? Lets be clear, this wouldnt even be news if it wasnt for "Datacentre"
If they don’t want to use it for the agreed upon purpose, they could either offer to pay the true value so they can use it for something else or give it back to the farmer/heirs. The real problem seems to be one city gave the land to a parks nonprofit who then sold it to another city, but the original park intent did not follow those sales.
And if they need it for something else they could just compulsorily acquire it from themselves for 10 more dollars?
Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center
#393It's exhausting that the "solution" to problems like this is getting tens or hundreds of thousands of citizens stressed until enough public attention gives some small chance of redress. I'm not calling for violence, but if we can't get these things fixed in court there has to be a more effect and more forceful avenue for protest than venting on internet forums.
The solution here might be the appeals court, since there is a deed restriction. The city agreed to it when they paid $10 for the land. The article mentions that Texas courts tend to be pretty serious about enforcing deed restrictions.
That property was transferred multiple times after the farmer gave it away. I can’t tell if that save deed restriction followed those sales
Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center
#394Earlier quoted context omitted.
By what measure does it work for the French? They have 8% unemployment, 30% less GDP per capita than the US, and many other problems. Government by caving in to riots is not in general being responsive to the needs of the people.
Well gee, to start France has higher healthcare quality/access, higher life expectancy, much lower treatable mortality, better work-life balance (less hours worked, more guaranteed leave), lower wealth inequality, higher voter turnout (indicative of less apathy or less efforts to disenfranchise), among others. One of the problems with just using economic metrics is it seems to confuse the fact that the economy is sup…
Many Americans have a strong bias for measuring everything in money. If you've lived there, it can be shocking how pervasive the thinking is in EVERY decision.
Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center
#395Earlier quoted context omitted.
Americans don't even protest on weekdays, they wait for a weekend to do it. So it is easy to say that they aren't serious but on the other hand, they're a lot closer to the knife's edge of stability and missing a day of work can get them fired (especially in at-will employment states), Europe is not like this as much.
And if they lose the job they lose their insurance, thus their medication. This increases stakes to protest quite a lot, compared to European worker protection and social security.
Yes, they've wound up having their whole lives very effectively taken hostage. Also criminals lose the right to vote don't they? Seems like the perfect incentive to criminalize any political movements that are contrary to the ruling class.
Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center
#396Earlier quoted context omitted.
Property law in America is insane from all sides. It's one of the few countries where you can just say something is yours, and someone else can disagree, and you get to argue about it forever. The only reason it is like that is we are still pretending all lands belong to the King of England. We never went back and fixed it. Even England itself fixed this, but we're too stupid.
Seems pretty straightforward to me. The land is owned by the city, that much is not in question. If they signed the deed, they agreed to the condition that they would use it to build a park. If they didn't sign the deed, they never agreed to that condition.
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Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center
#397Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those two things are contradictory. Obviously the government isn't very responsive if they are constantly protesting.
It’s not contradictory, protesting doesn’t make sense as a one time thing, you have to continuously put pressure and show you have power as a group
Only if you have a government that isn't responsive or accountable to you.
Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center
#398This commercial abuse is reminiscent of what Wimbledon is doing with land left for public park land which various parties are ignoring so the land can be used for tennis facilities. I'm a fan of the tennis but that doesn't mean they can arbitrarily ignore what was agreed as a condition for letting the council have the land in the first place.
Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center
#399Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're edging on terrorism
What is left when all other options are exhausted? The American War of Independence, French Revolution and English Civil War were acts of terrorism. Were those acts justified? Not if you're the ones who were initially holding the power.
The french revolution was terrible and made every single person in france worse off. It is the exact evidence that shows that even in a revolution restraint is still needed.
Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center
#400Rumour was an old lady donated posthumously alot of money she had saved up her whole life, to build a university at Estepona in Spain. After she died they never built it. The town remains pretty much the same as it always was. Last time I was there they had replaced the red marble promenade that was cracked on the beach with some sort of rubber playground cement, and for some reason that I can only put down to malice…
For the median worker in a small town in Spain, an entire life savings of scrimping and saving could still be only a fraction of what it would take to build one lecture hall. Might not even pay for a single year of salaries, operations, and expenses. Put a million Euros into an endowment, and at 5% annual returns, that's 50,000 Euros, enough to hire maybe one person to run and teach everything. Even if it was 10 mill…
the point of the story was that it was given to the council on condition they built a university with it ( she wasn't a fishermans wife ).
as in she was rich bro
edit> are you trolling me?