I’m a little baffled by the uplifting tone of this article.

Here’s the gist: The city of Seattle seized an independent coffee shop via eminent domain as it was planning its overly-ambitious, ridiculously expensive monorail project. The project eventually failed when government officials couldn’t come up with a conceivable way to pay for it. So when the monorail finally drew its last breath, the city had to return the land it seized, including said independent coffee shop.

Here’s the rub: The city sold the shop back to its original owners, but only at a 10 percent premium. All in all, the owners of the shop lost some $120,000 between legal fees and the $70,000 extra they had to pay above what the city originally paid them when it seized their property.

The really depressing thing? The owners are delighted with the outcome. Shows just how little many people have come to expect from government. That, or they rightfully fear that if they bitch and moan in the press, the city will come and extort another $100 grand from them.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 24th, 2006 at 1:12 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.