Karen York’s editorial that property owners are entitled to just compensation is timely in light of the new Malibu Bay Company agreement calling for the city to purchase the 20-acre Chili Cookoff site for a public park and wastewater facility to clean Malibu Creek.
When I hear my fellow liberal Democrats say, “We shouldn’t have to pay market value for the Cookoff site because they could never develop it anyway,” I am shocked that people who have devoted their political lives to civil rights so glibly carve out an exception for property owners.
Environmentalists who call parcels “undevelopable” are in effect conspiring to deny all of us our 14th Amendment rights against the government taking property without compensation. While we all share the honorable goal of protecting open spaces, imposing “No Use” regulations in the name of the public good erodes the fundamental rights and liberties of all of us.
Anne Hoffman