A bike path 7 feet from their front door — and the government coldly says: “They should be grateful they have 2 feet!”
From APC’s Tom DeWeese:
Government is out of control. Taking land and leaving homeowners in the rubble. “Have a nice day!” That’s their attitude.
Jennie Granato is a tax-paying citizen of Montgomery County, Ohio. She and her family own a 165-year-old historic house and farm just outside of Dayton. They’ve lived there forty years. On July 31, Jennie’s front yard was demolished – thanks to local, county and planning commission bureaucrats!
The Miami Valley Regional Planning Commission (MVRPC) has begun seizing people’s private property for its latest “essential” project – a $5-million bike path extension!
It has seized almost all of Jennie’s front lawn. The bike path will come within just a few feet of her front door!
Jennie and her family tried for over a year to negotiate and reason with this unelected planning commission.
The county and its appraisers kept stalling, saying they wanted a meeting with Jennie, even as they ignored her pleas and offered just a pittance for taking her front yard.
Now with the bike path running just 7 feet from her door and the front yard destroyed – the house it literally worthless. Who would buy it?
And when some friends of Jennie’s asked one of the Planning Commission members how he would like it if this happened to his house – he said “they should be grateful they have two feet.”
She should be grateful the government allows her to live in the house – even though their quality of life and their life long investment is destroyed!!!!!!
Is this what our government has come to?
Is this what you think government’s proper role should be?
But this tragic story gets even worse.
On the day the bulldozers suddenly showed up and started ripping out the trees and hedge in the front yard, Jennie’s 85-year old mother walked out into the yard to see what was happening.
Suddenly she saw the bulldozer rip out her favorite Magnolia tree. The tree she sat under in her swing on many a happy summer night.
Now it too was gone. Her front yard was in a shambles.
Jennie’s mom became so upset, she suffered a heart attack and died. Right then. Right there in her beloved yard.
And the government said – “not our fault.” It says it was just promoting the “public welfare” of the private “stakeholders” and pressure groups it works with.
That too has become far too common. The government and these groups want more and more control over our lives, more power to tell us what we can and cannot do with our private property and lives.
But they accept no accountability, responsibility or liability when their actions hurt … or even kill … someone – or when they destroy the property values, peace and integrity of a home.
The MVRPC is an unelected regional government force driven by federal Sustainable Development grant money. It never faces voters over its actions or positions of seemingly unbridled power. It simply deals with other government agencies – local, state and federal – and with private groups like the American Planning Association, ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability, and a hoard of other organizations that represent faux “conservation and environmental” interests whose real motivation is money, and the power to control our lives.
With the assistance of Federal and State grant programs and willing politicians, who see another way to build their own power and get elected over and over, they rule over us like unaccountable dictators. It’s the same story in nearly every community in our nation.
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 their tax dollars.
Yet the MVRPC imposed itself on privately owned property, giving the owner no say in the matter and giving her a pittance in exchange for the land it is taking away. Soon, strangers on bikes will be crossing her land, passing within seven feet of her front door. And she fears there is nothing she can do about it.
How does she secure her home? How can she ever hope to sell it? Who will compensate her for the loss of value, now that her once lovely and private front lawn is gone? Certainly not the MVRPC.
The American Policy Center has warned Americans over and over about the dangers of this fraud called “Sustainable Development” – and the enforcement of top-down control through non-elected boards and regional governments. Here is that reality, in all of its outrageous raw power.
I was in Dayton just days before the bull dozers arrived on Jennie’s property.
I met with Jennie and connected her to local property rights activists and concerned citizens. And I issued a nationwide Sledgehammer Action Alert to build a groundswell of support for Jennie.
The news medial has taken note of her plight. She has been interviewed by national publications and radio and television.
As a result, these unelected and cold hearted members of the MVRPC and other officials are now feeling the heat.
Jennie’s neighbors, property rights activists and Tea Party leaders are joining forces to support her fight to stop this outrage. They have gathered at the property, to protest and take the issue to the news media – and will do so again.
But you and I both know that these officials are simply waiting for all of this to go away and then they will return to business as usual. They will not pay for their filthy deeds. And they will be free to grab someone else’s property and cause more tragedy.
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And that my friends is what can happen right here in NH, specifically Pinardville!
