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

Man o man, that's frustrating to no end.

I REALLY hope there was a clause in there that if the city does ANYTHING other than turn it into a park the man can sue the city for 120% of the value of the sale or he gets 90% of the sales revenue.

Gonna play a little devil's advocate here.

Setting aside whether I think data centers or good or bad and just focusing on the sale of the land (for whatever purpose).

The land was donated back in 99 and looks like they never followed through on making it anything. Which is pretty shitty to Mr Bland's vision.

Though that donation itself is a bit weird because literally on the just the other side of the neighborhood is. a park!

https://maps.app.goo.gl/jwcANZ59bW17sTmm7

according to the town site the park was dedicated in 1955 https://www.taylortx.gov/244/Fannie-Robinson-Park

I suspect It just sat fallow for 25 years because there was already a park nearby and nobody bothered to press them on using the land for it's donated purpose. It switched hands a few times. Likely someone turned it up in some meeting and realized at this point they were never going to do anything with it and might as well sell it.

Edit: In considering the protracted timeline, I revise the assumption to "nobody at the office knew why they had the land or any stipulations attached to it". it's even possible that the buyers in 08 didn't know the terms of the original deed from nearly a decade before. Not that it makes it right to sell it but the intent wasn't likely malicious, the land wasn't donated just last year or anything.

> Our land should not be bound forever by the preferences of the dead.

This only came up because living people also care about it.

If you want to make it illegal to dictate how land is used, do so directly. I'd be fine with the state passing a new law, voted on by the people, stripping such deeds of their status. But until then, it doesn't seem good at all to ignore an existing law at the whims of local government.

And of course, at that point, don't be surprised when the people keep voting to toss data centers out - if individuals can't be expected to dictate what happens to their land, neither should corporations.

In Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy, he reviewed Roman records and compared provinces with heavily fortified seats of power to ones that weren't as fortified. The ones that were more fortified tended to be governed in a way that was more callous, less efficient, and less popular. He concluded that it was good for governors to have a reasonable fear of those they governed.

The U.S.'s institutions of power are heavily fortified. Political leaders of most countries travel about with a security detail of a few cars at most. The U.S. president has a gargantuan motorcade that's only rivaled in size by those of third world dictators. Arguably, the U.S. president doesn't hold power so much as wield it in the interest of oligarchs, who are even more insulated from the public.

If Americans want better government, what they really need to do is make oligarchs and politicians feel like they might actually be made to feel the consequences of their actions. That doesn't necessarily have to mean violence though, if people are creative enough.

e.g. Elon Musk wants so much to control what the world thinks of him that he bought Twitter and had Grokipedia made in an attempt to kill Wikipedia, since they have honestly reported on his misadventures with the same standards of rigor applied to other public figures. If you want to make Elon Musk feel consequences, just never let up on him. The dude made Nazi salutes during Trump's inauguration twice. His DOGE idiocy is why Texas livestock is being banned in other countries because of screwworms. Keep talking about that and don't stop.

> American police are much more inclined to escalate any violence instead of trying to de-escalate.

American police inclined to do nothing, because it is locally hired and not paid/controlled by government.