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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

#221

Post by everforward »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #206
everforward wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. They don’t because it’s a private agreement, so only the involved parties can sue. In this case, if the original seller died then standing to sue would be inherited (I believe).…

> They don’t because it’s a private agreement, so only the involved parties can sue. That isn't generally how legal restrictions on the use of real estate work. They're just part of the property. Compare https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/real_covenant : > Real covenants affect the landowner’s property rights and “run with the land,” meaning that future owners of the property are bound by the covenant. Since there's a c…

Go look at their page for “covenant”, because “real covenant” is a subtype that only specifies the ways it’s different from a non-property covenant https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/covenant

Quoting from that page:

“The party capable of enforcing the covenant depends on whether the burden or the benefit runs with the land. In other words, only the party who the covenant is designed to help can enforce it.”

Your page spells out the other relevant bits. Real covenants must benefit one party at the expense of another (horizontal privity), so the heirs of the man who donated the land are the benefactors. That it helps (or at least doesn’t harm) the neighbor does not make them the benefactor here because their benefit was incidental (ie they aren’t legally “the benefactor”).

Covenants being centrally registered is a matter of convenience when house shopping, not a declaration that the state will enforce them.

I’d actually bet there are a lot of houses that have racial segregation covenants on them still because the benefactors quit trying to enforce them. I know my city has a bunch of racist laws on the books still because the city quit enforcing them ages ago, city council doesn’t want to spend time revoking laws that haven’t been used in 50 years, and no one has standing to sue to revoke them unless they get arrested for them.

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

#222

Post by LorenPechtel »

SilverElfin wrote: post #176
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.

This feels a lot like what happens with taxes too. You pass some measure to fund a particular thing voters want. That money then gets spent on unrelated things or just siphoned off into a city’s general fund, disappearing into corrupt grifts and waste. Meanwhile the thing you wanted is unaddressed, and a couple years later, that same thing ends up being recycled into yet another new tax to vote for. But you, the vote…

Or the local game of putting stuff on the ballot that on the surface is for some reasonable purposes--but when you dig into it they're actually attempting to finance stuff that should be paid out of the current budget. To date I've voted against 100% of bond proposals because of this.

Meanwhile, city hall got built without any financing. And I can't imagine how it complies with the fire code. I really would not want to be upstairs in an evacuation!

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

#223

Post by jmalicki »

triceratops wrote: post #130
childofhedgehog wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having natural spaces within communities is vital for mental health. For example, Central Park in NYC is a vital resource for the city allowing people to enjoy nature close to home. Kids need places to go and play. Adults need space to recreate. Pets need space too. Why would you want to have no green spaces within your community?

Central Park isn't wild. I replied to someone who said we need more wild areas. I'm all for parks.

There is a huge gradation of "how wild".

Central park is way more wild than a playground, which is way more wild than a city street corner.

The Yosemite National Park front country is way more wild than Central Park.

The federally-protected wilderness areas, where it is illegal to use a chainsaw for trail management as that is not sufficiently wild, in the Sierra Nevadas are even more wild, but still have a ton of people, trails etc.

The Brooks Range in Alaska is yet even more wild - no/few trails, take a bush plane in/out, etc.

Allowing a bit more wilderness is always a utility - it doesn't have to be binary wild/not wild (and very little land habitable by humans has ever not been severely influenced by humans)

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

#224

Post by gottorf »

jfengel wrote: post #217
tptacek wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I find that standing makes judges philosopher-kings in collusion with the rest of the government. If they don't like the plaintiff, they reject them for not having "standing". If they do like the plaintiff, they'll find standing, no matter how thin a connection they have to rely on for it. For example, the Supreme Court case where they found standing for somebody to refuse to make a same-sex wedding web site, even th…

> the Supreme Court case where they found standing

> nobody had actually asked for one and the person didn't even make wedding web sites

> There was no actual case

303 Creative v. Elenis started out because the web designer sought injunctive relief from a Colorado state law that would have made her unable to refuse to make a website for a same-sex wedding. She had received a request to make a wedding website (for a heterosexual couple), and preemptively wanted to preserve her right to refuse in light of the Colorado law and to put up a public-facing notice stating as much. The case was appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court by the designer herself.

It doesn't read to me that any standing was "invented" here. Notably, the dissent in this 6-3 decision does not discuss standing at all; and in fact, the Tenth Circuit that decided against the designer (prior to the SC appeal) did find that she had standing.

It sounds like you have your own personal gripes with this decision, which is fair, but an attack on the grounds that there was no standing is misguided.

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

#225

Post by butlike »

everforward wrote: post #198
pessimizer wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 covena…

> 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. They don’t because it’s a private agreement, so only the involved parties can sue. In this case, if the original seller died then standing to sue would be inherited (I believe).…

> Like if the land just isn’t usable as a park because it’s too out of the way to be worth maintenance or building it would be insane because it’s a literal swamp, what is the city supposed to do with that? Own it and just do nothing with it in perpetuity?

Why would the city buy it with the original stipulation attached if that were the case? Seems dishonest (which isn't illegal), but yeah...

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

#226

Post by CGMthrowaway »

jjk166 wrote: post #60
arjie wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why shouldn't B have standing? They presumably are residents of and taxpayers to city C, and they face property devaluation stemming from nearby municipal actions.

In Texas, only certain parties can enforce deed restrictions, usually:

  The original grantor (or heirs)
  A property owners’ association
  Or someone specifically granted enforcement rights
A more strongly written deed restriction would have specified a reversionary interest, wherein upon the conditions being broken, the property interest automatically springs back to the original owner. The rules of standing still apply but the sale to data center might not have ever gone through

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

#227

Post by clickety_clack »

I don’t get why you would sell the land instead of putting it in a trust inherited by your descendants and leased to the city for some long period of time. Then everybody wins and the city can’t just decide to sell it to someone else.

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

#228

Post by insane_dreamer »

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…

If the deed was restricted, how could C legally sell to D without restriction?

Is the answer "yes it was illegal but A would have to file suit and they're dead"?

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

#229

Post by order-matters »

ip26 wrote: post #216
order-matters wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

presumably because it's not their land and if A wanted to build a data center on it to begin with then B could do nothing about it. the key issue is C doing things that it's taxpayers dont want done. in this case though taxpayer money is not being spent, the property is being sold which means money is being generated for the taxpayers, and the new property owner is ultimately A never had the authority to contract the…

A never had the authority to contract the land as a park indefinitely ... once C owns it they own it That's not what a deed restriction is. are you stuck with passing that obligation forward Generally yes. Which is why the deed restriction can affect the market value of the property.

The city usually has the authority to dismiss deed restrictions if it is in the best interest of the city.

my wording was too vague though, youre right in that I took for granted we were talking about the city and this doesnt generally apply to normal ownerships or else HOAs wouldnt be anywhere near as annoying as they are.

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

#230

Post by tptacek »

jfengel wrote: post #217
tptacek wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I find that standing makes judges philosopher-kings in collusion with the rest of the government. If they don't like the plaintiff, they reject them for not having "standing". If they do like the plaintiff, they'll find standing, no matter how thin a connection they have to rely on for it. For example, the Supreme Court case where they found standing for somebody to refuse to make a same-sex wedding web site, even th…

"In collusion with the rest of the government" makes that statement meaningless.
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