Property rights: What's zoning for, anyway?

Property

rights: What's zoning for, anyway?

I feel compelled to

respond to Mr. Gilmer's diatribe on property rights (The

Citizen, Feb 16, 2000).

You may believe otherwise,

but the government frequently "takes" private

property without full compensation. Usually, though, it

is some small landowner, not the big developers.

In the same issue of The

Citizen there was a letter from citizens living near

Crabapple Lane concerned about Georgia Power's (a

government regulated monopoly) plan to construct a large

power transmission line along Crabapple Lane and condemn

private property near the corner of Crabapple and Ga.

Highway 74 for a power substation.

That landowner will receive

next to nothing for his land and the homeowners along

Crabapple will certainly see their property values drop.

Is this fair? No. Can they expect compensation? Not in

this lifetime.

No landowner has a right to

the most valuable use of his property, only to use it

within the established zoning. If a developer buys land

zoned for three-acre residential lots, should he be

entitled to have it rezoned commercial simply because he

could make more money? If answer is yes, then why have

zoning at all?

If I want to build a trash

dump next to your house on land I own, then I should be

able to do so, right? I certainly hope not.

I have seen, many times in

Peachtree City, developers buying land with one zoning

and demanding rezoning so they can reach some huge return

on investment. If they couldn't make the profit they

wanted within the existing zoning, they should not have

bought the land in the first place. Is this fair?

Certainly, it is.

I believe Mr. Fodor's point

is not that we should build a moat around Peachtree City,

but that we should slow development until infrastructure

(roads, bridges, water and sewer, schools, health and

safety support, etc.) can catch up without placing an

inordinate tax burden on the existing residents. That

certainly seems a worthy goal.

Meanwhile, no one has taken

the landowner's property. He still has it and can develop

it at some point in the future.

Robert Brown

Peachtree City