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Author Topic: Government tries grabbing church property with eminent domain
Kindgo
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Cypress continues its unholy war
Apri. 14, 2002
By Steven Greenhut
The Orange County Register

http://ocregister.com/commentary/co...t20020414.shtml

In a despicable recent example of local government abuse, the Cypress City Council turned aside public opposition Monday night and pushed forward the first step in its likely plan to use eminent domain to take property owned by Cottonwood Christian Center.

The basic details of the Cottonwood case are not in dispute. The non-denominational Christian center, which now meets in facilities in nearby Los Alamitos, bought an 18-acre parcel and proceeded to plan a church and community center properly zoned for the site.

City officials don't want a church on the site because churches don't pay many taxes. So the city has begun the process of taking the property and handing it over to retail developers for a Costco retail center even though the city's plan, at least arguably, does not conform to the current zoning.

In the world of Cypress, a church is not free to build a properly zoned structure on its own land. But officials are free to take the land and sell or give it to other private owners to build a project that may not even be in conformance with current zoning laws.

Welcome to America.

Of course, city officials, such as City Manager Pat Importuna, dress up this Soviet- x esque policy in the languagex of progressivism and enlightenment. Importuna - who, according to Cottonwood Pastor Bayless Conley, stated in a closed-door meeting with attorneys that the council is merely a rubber stamp for the city manager's edicts - talks about the need for better planning and economic development.

Every big-government outrage is justified by some higher purpose, some greater good, some need for "fairness."

Sadly, if not for a legal system that occasionally rebukes the likes of Importuna, our system of government wouldn't be all that different from the ones that operated in the Eastern bloc. Unfortunately, the decks are stacked in favor of the government.

Cypress officials have been spending taxpayers' money to do environmental studies and plan retail development on a site they do not own. Officials have launched tirades against the church and a local news/public relations organ has parroted city attacks on Cottonwood.

City bureaucrats have refused to allow council members to meet directly with Cottonwood officials until late in the process, thus limiting opx portunities for a negotiated settlement. City officials have used tax dollars to hire a prominent PR firm, Waters and Faubel, to advance their cause. The city commissioned a slanted poll designed to show public support for the city's heavyhanded actions.

Some would call it a taxpayer-supported smear campaign against an organization that has the audacity to want to minister to the community, salvage lives, save souls. What good is any of that compared to the higher calling of sales-tax-generating discount shopping at Costco?

While the city has told the Register, the church and others that it is still interested in negotiating a settlement that allows church and retail uses for the property, it has pushed forward this relentless campaign to keep the eminent-domain proceedings going.

Apparently, as one Cottonwood spokeswoman says, the talk of negotiation lets the city conform to the state's redevelopment law, but is nothing more than window-dressing for the real goal of taking the land. As I've written before, negotiating with someone who is going to take your property if you don't agree to their terms is like negotiating with someone who is holding you at gunpoint.

Most telling, officials don't even grasp why what they are doing is so reprehensible.

"Why should the church be the best and highest use for land facing two arterial highways in the last undeveloped property in north county?" asked City Attorney Bill Wynder at Monday's meeting, according to a Register report last week.

The answer, Mr. Wynder, is because the church owns the property and has proposed a plan that is in keeping with the local commercial-center zoning. If Wynder cannot figure out the importance of property ownership, then perhaps he should share with me his address and I'll be right over with my buddies to throw a beer bash on his back terrace.

Property rights form a dividing line between free societies and dictatorships, because they allow individuals to live their own lives, build their own businesses and worship as they please - even if government officials have other ideas.

That "even if" is the central principle by which our increasingly less-free nation was founded.

Monday's meeting was not a public hearing, officials announced, so they restricted public comments from the nearly 500 Cottonwood supporters to a half-hour before the meeting and two hours afterward. At 11:30 councilman Tim Keenan abruptly shut down debate so members could get home before their cars turned to pumpkins.

This is the first time Cottonwood has begun to exert pressure from its large and growing congregation. I hope it won't be the last time. Perhaps Cottonwood officials, who made the mistake of trusting that Cypress was serious about negotiating a settlement, realize now that they must play hardball against a city that wants to take their land, plain and simple, no matter what officials say in public.

Cottonwood has filed a lawsuit based on a 2000 federal law designed to stop government restrictions on church building for reasons such as this. The church needs to pursue that and perhaps other lawsuits (i.e., based on First Amendment grounds) vigorously.

It needs to rally its members, using its worldwide broadcasts if necessary. It needs to organize protests and inundate City Council members (Mayor Lydia Sondhi, Frank McCoy, Tim Keenan, Mike McGill, Anna Piercy) with mail, phone calls, political organizing campaigns, urging them to listen to their community and not just rubber-stamp city bureaucrats.

Church members and supporters need to contact Costco, which is a notorious beneficiary of redevelopment largesse, to ask company officials why they are taking part in a scheme to take away someone else's property. Assemblyman Ken Maddox, the Garden Grove Republican who represents a neighboring district, pledges to organize a boycott if Costco breaks ground.

Few other political leaders seem interested in defending the church. Assemblyman Bill Campbell, R-Villa Park, is the only other Orange County Assembly member who signed a letter from Maddox to the council calling for it to rethink the decision. The member who represents the district, Tom Harman, did not sign the letter.

"It is hubris for the city of Cypress to decide a church isn't the best use of land owned by the church," Maddox told me. "In the Soviet Union, Stalin seized churches and turned them into museums. Cypress seizes a church and wants to turn it into a Costco. At least Stalin looked for something with artistic merit."

Church supporters are going to have to appeal to the wider public in order to stop Cypress' actions. If these officials can get away with unjustly taking the property of a large and well-funded church, then they and others like them won't hesitate to take yours.

Think I'm exaggerating? Take a look at the latest plan in neighboring Garden Grove. Officials with a similar mindset want to displace many residents and small business owners to build, among other possibilities, a theme park. It's the latest "get rich quick" scheme by Garden Grove, which has a notorious reputatation for trying to shortchange its many victims of eminent domain when it comes time to pay fair-market value.

~~~~~~~ [fie]

How's that cliche go? First they came for them and I said nothing. Then they came for me and there was no one left to defend me?

--------------------
God bless,
Kindgo

Inside the will of God there is no failure. Outside the will of God there is no success.

Posts: 4320 | From: Sunny Florida | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator


 
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