This is a perfect example of what can happen when sustainability grants are enforced by unelected regional boards. Frankly, if people wait until this point it may be too late.
From Tom DeWeese, property rights activist:
Jennie Granato, a resident and tax-paying citizen of Montgomery County, Ohio, has found herself without a front yard and very little to show for it.
Because the Miami Valley Regional Planning Commission (MVRPC), as part of a $5M bike path extension, has begun to seize up private property for their “essential” project, including almost the entirety of Miss Granato’s front lawn.
The bike path will come within seven feet of her front door!!
The bike path is being forced by the MVRPC, a non-elected regional planning commission that is driven by federal Sustainable Development grant money – with no input from local residents or property owners. The local country commissioners and the township trustees are helping to enforce this program.
Jennie and her family own a historic farm outside Dayton, Ohio. They have tried to negotiate and reason with this unelected planning commission. But the MCRPC has done nothing but ignore her pleas. And they have offered her only a pittance of compensation for this taking of her land.
The fact is that Jenny and her family still own this property – YET the township has already come in and removed trees and dug up the ground!
It’s her property!!!
Again – the bike path is going through her property only 7 feet from her front door!
The Granato’s house is a 150 year old farmhouse that a study said “lacked historic integrity”. Apparently that makes it okay to seize the privately owned property in front of it and pave over the entire front lawn.
And now a great tragedy has occurred as Jennie has tried to fight this outrage. Just days ago, as the government bulldozers arrived and started their destruction of the front yard, Jennie’s 85 year old mother became so upset over the injustice of government ramming a bike path into her front door of her private home, she suffered a heart attack and died.
Is this how our government now treats law abiding American citizens?
The MVRPC is an unelected agency. Neither Jennie nor any of her neighbors voted to institute the agency or its policies.
There was no vote for this bike path.
There was no referendum on the ballot to approve this project or the spending of the tax dollars.
Yet the MVRPC has imposed itself on privately owned property, giving the owner no say in the matter and giving her virtually nothing in exchange for the land they are taking away.
This is why regional planning is so dangerous. County planners and commissioners see nothing wrong with seizing up private property with little compensation to the owners in the name of “public good”. There is no world in which a bike path through your neighbor’s front yard is “essential”. If we allow governmental and non-governmental agencies to dictate “public good” at the expense of individuals and their property, they will trample all over our rights
The American Policy Center has issued warning after warning about the dangers of Sustainable Development and the enforcement of top down control through non-elected boards and regional government. Here it is in all of its raw outrage.
Take a good look America! Jennie’s tragedy will be that of every American property owner…
This is what is happening all over the country. If you have been following Girard at Large, you know that something similar is about to happen in Pinardville, unless it is stopped.