Archive for the ‘Property Rights’ Category
Superior man arrested for trespassing on his own land
December 4th, 2009 | 
Author: Superior man arrested for trespassing on his own land
The latest chapter in a saga over an easement for a pipeline ended with Jeremy Engelking going to jail.
December 4, 2009
Jeremy Engelking will appear in Douglas County court this afternoon to face a trespassing charge. But here’s the kicker: The Superior man allegedly trespassed on his own property.
Engelking, 27, aimed to hunt deer Wednesday morning when he noticed a pipeline crew on his land. He hopped on his ATV and told workers they had no right to be on his property because he had received no compensation from Enbridge Energy Partners L.P. for an easement.
Engelking said workers told him he was in an unsafe place and asked him to come to an equipment staging area, where he continued to argue his case.
But just as he was turning to leave, Engelking said an officer from the Douglas County Sheriff’s Department arrived on the scene and approached with a Taser drawn.
“He ordered me to ‘get down on the ground now!’ And he said that I was being arrested for trespassing,” Engelking said.
When Engelking protested, pointing out that he was on his own property, he said Sgt. Robert Smith told him: “It doesn’t matter. You’re going to jail. You can tell it to a judge tomorrow.”
Engelking offered no resistance, but Smith placed him in handcuffs then transported him to the Douglas County Jail. After posting a $200 bail bond, Engelking was released that afternoon. He also had to pay about another $100 to recover his impounded ATV.
The incident report says Engelking parked his ATV in front of pipeline equipment, stopping workers. Engelking said that wasn’t his intention.
Engelking’s arrest Wednesday is the latest episode in a long disagreement he and his father, Jerry Engelking, have had with Enbridge, dating to the company’s last pipeline expansion in 2002.
Jerry Engelking, who owns 200 acres next to his son, said he refused to sign off on changes proposed to the original 1949 easement across his property because he felt the revisions put too many restrictions on how he could use his property. That original easement said future pipes laid along the same route would require payments in advance.
According to court documents, Enbridge sent a $15,000 check to Jerry Engelking and also tried to hand-deliver payments, but Engelking refused to accept them.
Engelking said that to claim the money he would have had to broaden the scope of the existing easement across his property, so he turned the checks down. When the latest pipeline project came along, the Engelkings again refused to modify the original 1949 right-of-way agreement.
The family sought a restraining order against Enbridge on Sept. 24, arguing the company intended to use the pipeline for transporting petroleum products other than those originally allowed, protesting that they had not been paid and citing damage to property.
Douglas County Circuit Court Judge George Glonek granted a temporary injunction but lifted it the following day, saying the company’s plans for the pipeline were appropriate and efforts had been made to pay the Engelkings.
Jerry Engelking said the fight’s not finished yet.
Officers reported no similar incidents along the path of the Enbridge pipeline construction in Douglas County, said Lt. Gerald Moe of the Douglas County Sheriff’s Department.
Grymala said that Enbridge has worked with about 1,500 landowners as part of the pipeline project.
“We recognize construction is an inconvenience to people; people want access to their land,” she said. “We strive to be respectful of that, to have a good working relationship.”
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Pfizer to Leave City That Won Land-Use Case
Pfizer to Leave City That Won Land-Use Case
From the edge of the Thames River in New London, Conn., Michael Cristofaro surveyed the empty acres where his parents’ neighborhood had stood, before it became the crux of an epic battle over eminent domain.
“Look what they did,” Mr. Cristofaro said on Thursday. “They stole our home for economic development. It was all for Pfizer, and now they get up and walk away.”
That sentiment has been echoing around New London since Monday, when Pfizer, the giant drug company, announced it would leave the city just eight years after its arrival led to a debate about urban redevelopment that rumbled through the United States Supreme Court, and reset the boundaries for governments to seize private land for commercial use.
Pfizer said it would pull 1,400 jobs out of New London within two years and move most of them a few miles away to a campus it owns in Groton, Conn., as a cost-cutting measure. It would leave behind the city’s biggest office complex and an adjacent swath of barren land that was cleared of dozens of homes to make room for a hotel, stores and condominiums that were never built.
The announcement stirred up resentment and bitterness among some local residents. They see Pfizer as a corporate carpetbagger that took public money, in the form of big tax breaks, and now wants to run.
“I’m not surprised that they’re gone,” said Susette Kelo, who moved to Groton from New London after the city took her home near Pfizer’s property. “They didn’t get what they wanted: their development, their big plan.”
Ms. Kelo lived in a small pink house in the Fort Trumbull section that was square in the sights of city and state officials who wanted to revitalize the area. The city had created the New London Development Corporation to buy up the nine-acre neighborhood and find a developer to replace it with an “urban village” that would draw shoppers and tourists to the area.
Economic development officials in Connecticut used that plan — and a package of financial incentives — to lure Pfizer to build a headquarters for its research division on 26 acres nearby. With an agreement that it would pay just one-fifth of its property taxes for the first 10 years, Pfizer spent $294 million on a 750,000-square-foot complex that opened in 2001.
By then, Ms. Kelo, the Cristofaros and several neighbors had sued the city to stop it from using its power of eminent domain to take their property. The lawsuit, Kelo v. New London, wound up at the Supreme Court in 2005 as one of the most scrutinized property-rights cases in years.
In a 5-to-4 decision, the high court ruled that it was permissible to take private property and turn it over to developers as part of a plan to bolster the local economy. Conservative justices, including Clarence Thomas, dissented. Justice Thomas called New London’s plan “a costly urban-renewal project whose stated purpose is a vague promise of new jobs and increased tax revenue, but which is also suspiciously agreeable to the Pfizer Corporation.”
The decision was widely criticized, and spurred lawmakers across the country to adopt statutes to prevent similar uses of eminent domain. Scott G. Bullock, senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, a libertarian group in Arlington, Va., said that 43 states had moved to protect private-property rights since the Kelo decision. New York and New Jersey are among the seven that have not, he said.
Mr. Bullock, who represented the landowners in New London, said Pfizer’s announcement “really shows the folly of these plans that use massive corporate welfare and abuse eminent domain for private development.”
“They oftentimes fail to live up to expectations,” he added.
For its part, Pfizer said it had no stake in the outcome of the Kelo case nor any interest in the development of the land that was acquired by eminent domain, according to a statement provided by a spokeswoman, Liz Power.
After Pfizer completed its $67 billion acquisition of Wyeth, another drug giant, in October, Ms. Power said, “We had a lot of real estate that we had to make strategic decisions about.” She said Pfizer would try to sell or lease its buildings in New London and would “continue to pay our taxes to the city as scheduled.”
The complex is currently assessed at $220 million, said Robert M. Pero, a city councilman who is scheduled to become mayor next month. The company pays tax on 20 percent of that value and the state pays an additional 40 percent, Mr. Pero said. That arrangement is scheduled to end in 2011, around the time Pfizer, which is currently the city’s biggest taxpayer, expects to complete its withdrawal.
“Basically, our economy lost a thousand jobs, but we still have a building,” Mr. Pero said. Then again, he added, “I don’t know who’s going to be looking for a building like that in this economy.”
Some residents said they expected Pfizer to seek a revaluation of its buildings if they wind up vacant in two years; Ms. Power declined to comment.
Mr. Pero said that he was offended that Pfizer did not notify city officials about the decision before Monday or give them a chance to argue against it or even fully understand it. But he said he did not regret the decisions he and other elected officials had made to bring Pfizer to New London for what they had hoped would be a long and fruitful stay.
“I’m sure that there are people that are waiting out there to say, ‘I told you so,’ ” Mr. Pero said. “I don’t know that even today you can say, ‘I told you so.’ ”
But Mr. Cristofaro and Ms. Kelo both said just that.
Ms. Kelo, a nurse who works in New London and Norwich, Conn., said she was still bitter about the loss of her house, which she sold for $1 to Avner Gregory, a preservationist. Mr. Gregory dismantled the house and moved it across town. It now stands as a bright-pink symbol of the divisive dispute that drew so much attention to New London.
“In all honesty, I’m not happy about what happened to me,” Ms. Kelo said. But, she added, “With 43 states changing their laws, in that sense I feel we did some good for people across the country.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/13/nyregion/13pfizer.html?_r=1
