Individual rights trump 'takings'

To the editor:

What follows is a direct quote from the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution: (N)or shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. This, by Supreme Court fiat, includes regulatory takings.

This newspaper has branded those citizens who own property that just happens to be contiguous to Swansboro town limits as just freeloaders, and that because of geography relative to the town limits we are living on the cheap. This is repugnant! Is the mayor a king? Where in hell do individual rights fit into this?

The Tideland fails to mention that we enjoy county water service, road paving and maintenance, sheriff protection, and we do pay county property taxes, sales taxes, employment taxes, Obamacare tax, utility taxes, N.C. income taxes and Federal income taxes, just to name a few. And we are required by law to collect sales tax and income taxes with no compensation from any government. We provide jobs that pay good wages with benefits. We have created several million dollars to add to the local economy. We put up a small, temporary help wanted sign on N.C. 24. The townies confiscated it and demanded that we pay them $50. Non-compliance with the Gateway!

Many of these confiscations find their way back to Swansboro so that they may be squandered on nonsense like Sunset Park, or a marina that competes with another Swansboro business, or time wasted on a meaningless debate over building height, or gazebos, or a million dollars paid for the Catholic church property. Who in hell offered to buy Sunset for one million confiscated dollars and then lease it back for $1 a year? Now we have the Gateway mess that is a regulatory nightmare.

The Tideland failed to mention that there was a strong response to Swansboros attempt to confiscate property, and do so without providing sewer service while changing the zoning in very damaging ways. Our family business property would have been rezoned to residential, as would four or five other business properties. No reason for this change was given.

This arbitrary rezoning alone would severely damage our ability to obtain bank financing, severely damage the value of the business and make it impossible to sell if we chose to do so. The rezoning would require a new permit if the property were to suffer damage of 50 percent or more, so if the property is rezoned residential then we are screwed. We are a business!

My response was to threaten a suit for damages caused by a regulatory taking, and I had a very strong case. It would be fairly easy to show how this taking would reduce values.

Mr. Richard Banks, code enforcement officer at the time, listened and realized the stupidity behind this abuse of power. The property was not rezoned. The property is in the ETJ but subject to only building code regulation. That is the way it should have been, but the townies had other plans that they preferred to keep to themselves.

In the meantime, the N.C. state legislature was addressing the abuses of ETJ. I communicated with the committee in charge and urged them to create some balance within this legislation. Give the landowner some power to fight back. I was not alone. The legislature has spoken. Maybe now the townies will show some respect for the law and for individual rights.

See the article here:
Individual rights trump 'takings'