When you put it that way, i disagree. A gift is a gift. Once you give it to someone its their's to do with as they please. A gift with strings is not a gift.
This story is different though, the farmer sold the land for cheap in exchange for some conditions. This situation is more like going back on a contract.
If we are extending this metaphor, given the property passed through many hands, i feel like the equivalent would sort of be like giving a friend a gift, the friend eventually dies, their children sell it when dealing with the estate because they dont have use for the item.
I don't think the metaphor extends. A family gave their city land conditionally, decades went by, and then the city sells the land do develop a data center.
I don't understand what type of cope you are trying to achieve by excusing this as an okay thing to do.
> Gift your house to the city with a deed that says they have to rent it back to you forever for $1 a year?
What if I write a note saying that you need to pay me $10,000? That's not a contract, that's just a fever dream. But if you shake my hand and sign that piece of paper, that's a different story.
The same applies here. If you get the city to agree (and they don't get raided by the FBI after that), then sure, they should be bound by the deal they made.
Note that this works both ways. If you own nice rural acreage, the federal or state government will often be happy to pay you some token amount and give you a tax break for a conservation easement that prevents not only you, but all future owners, from using the land in certain ways. It's still yours, but it's now a scenic corridor and you can't build there anymore. There's plenty of such easements in California and other Western states. If I'm bound by such a perpetual, deed-attached restriction, why can't the government be?
If the city used eminent domain to snatch it away from the farmer this wouldnt even be news.
If the farmer deeded it to someone else, like a neighbor, and said they could only use it to build a park, no one would expect that to apply once the government had yoinked it by eminent domain.
It follows then, that government entities really aren't bound by deeded restrictions. If you made them jump through some hoop, where they had to gift the land and then eminent domain it back, that would probably be more wasteful than just letting them do whatever they think is best.
The oddest outcome I can imagine is the government being able to compulsorily acquire other peoples property, but being permanently stuck with a fixed use asset that they cant do anything with that they actually own. Thats bonkers.
If they don’t want to use it for the agreed upon purpose, they could either offer to pay the true value so they can use it for something else or give it back to the farmer/heirs.
The real problem seems to be one city gave the land to a parks nonprofit who then sold it to another city, but the original park intent did not follow those sales.
Yes. Society doesn't work if the government is above contract law. If the city can't abide by it's contracts it should not enter into them. Unlike abusive software TOSs the sale was/is not self executing/binding/changed after the fact. The city chose to enter into it with their eyes open.
But the government can unilaterally end other peoples contracts and forcibly acquire property. Why does it then follow that they must follow a contract that they could otherwise end just by giving it away and compulsorily acquiring it back?
Its like a pet bear that is allowed to eat from the floor but not when the meat is dangled over its nose.
Imagine a scenario where the government is building a rail line from A to B, and compulsorily acquires every piece of land on the route, but right smack dab in the middle is land they already own. You expect them to say "Well gosh dern we cant break that contract we signed guaranteeing that this would be a public urinal for the next 1000 years, after forcibly acquiring 10000 other parcels of land at gunpoint, cancel the project". Its entirely unrealistic to expect an entity that is designed to use its land to facilitate society, and can get whatever land it wants to think in terms of some random contract it can break completely legally in any other scenario.
Sounds like government should consider that before choosing to enter into contracts that constrain them then doesn't it? If it needs the flexibility it should not choose to limit the flexibility voluntarily and contractually.
Well yes and no. Ultimately if the contract was between 2 other parties they could unilaterally end it. It only follows that if they are one of the parties they can still unilaterally end it.
If you are my friend and I gift you a nice item … I would be majorly pissed at you and would not talk to you ever again if you would sell it online.
I would expect you give it back or pass for free to someone who is also close to you.