Winston-Salem, NC wants to seize some property for redevelopment using eminent domain despite the fact that they have not exhausted their other options.  You can read the entire story here in the Winston-Salem Journal, but here are the highlights:

• The city is trying to redevelop a strip of land on Liberty Street between the Smith Reynolds airport and downtown. They’ve set aside $500,000 to acquire all the lots.
• One landowner, Charles Baldwin, has a competing offer for the land from Firetree Ltd., a company that wants to build a halfway house there.
• The city is offering $145,000 for the land and Firetree is offering $172,500.  The property is appraised by the city at $172,000, which means they are taxing Mr. Baldwin based on that number but offering to buy it for $27,000 less.  The city claims that the difference is because of environmental issues with the property, but since the city acknowledges those issues exist doesn’t that mean their tax assessment should reflect the lower value?  That’s the immoral part of this whole thing.
• The city is suing to seize the property using eminent domain, but one component of eminent domain law is that the landowner be compensated fairly.  In what universe does an offer that is more than 15% less than an existing offer OR assessed valued by the city constitute fair compensation?  And what genius figured that suing would cost the city less than $28,000 which is really all they’d have to offer to get the land?  That’s the stupid part of this whole deal.

I truly hope that the city gets slapped around on this deal.  Whether or not you support eminent domain in concept I think any reasonable person would find it unconscionable that the city would tax a landowner at a higher assessed value than they are willing to pay for the land themselves.  Simply put that is total bull excrement.