Victory for preservation

The judges got it right.

While there has been a movement afoot to quash the government’s ability to seize property for public use, the fact remains that it is sometimes necessary. The decision yesterday to uphold a lower court decision allowing a Mount Laurel seizure of a 16-acre parcel slated for 23 single-family houses.

The 6-1 decision allowing Mount Laurel to take over an old farm and stop a planned housing development opens a new legal avenue for preserving open space. It also expands the use of eminent domain, a hot topic across the country since the U.S. Supreme Court last year allowed towns to seize land and turn it over to private developers.

“The citizens of New Jersey have expressed a strong and sustained public interest in the acquisition and preservation of open space,” the court wrote in an unsigned four-page decision.

The court said the Burlington County township’s desire to limit development, overcrowded schools, traffic congestion and pollution was consistent with the “motive driving the public interest in open-space acquisition.”

The court decision means that open space preservation can be considered as a legitimate public use (the issue in the New Canaan case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court focused on a commercial redevelopment plan). And in New Jersey, that has to be viewed as a positive — umm — development.

Cranbury snared ($) a significant parcel in 2005, the 53-acre Fischer property on South Main Street (often called the “gateway to the southern end of town”) after threatening condemnation. And other communities have done the same.

The issue, of course, has been framed in a way to benefit the large property owners and developers — pitting a huge faceless bureaucracy against some small, powerless homeowner (i.e., Long Branch). These takings do occur, often for nefarious reasons (which is why we need tighter campaign-finance rules and pay-to-play restrictions). But we should not allow situations like the Long Branch taking to color our view of eminent domain ($).

With the proper controls ($), it can function as a way to enhance the public good.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie. View all posts by hankkalet