ATTENTION MAYOR McKELVEY

[jay]

This was a bad decision.  To use local government to take private property for the benefit of a private developer is wrong.  

The structures involved in the original case in Connecticut were not slum houses.  One home had been in the same family for generations.

[Guest]

Wow... just think of all the other places in Youngstown that this would be beneficial!!!

[kitten44505]

In a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that local governments can seize private property for private economic development and opened the door for the city to seize the properties of the slumlords that plague our neighborhoods with houses that aren't fit for dogs to live in, and turn the properties over to developers who can revitalize the run down neighborhoods, and in the process drive out those who use these places as crack houses.

Said Justice John Paul Stevens in the opinion for the majority: "The city has carefully formulated an economic development that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including - but by no means limited to - new jobs and increased tax revenue."

I mention this in the wake of the Zoning Board's approval of the Wick Neighbors Inc Smokey Hollow plan.

Carmen Conglose seems to have problems with seizing land by eminent domain which was approved by the Supreme Court decision.

The Smokey Hollow plan is fantastic, and nothing should be allowed to stand in the way of it's compleation.