Earlier I posted about a redevelopment area in China, a communist country that managed to work around a single property owner, and provided a picture. To be fair this is not an unusual development throughout the world, another picture showed a highway diverting around a farm in England. These striking examples show that no matter what the development effort, property owners have a right to retain control of their property. Even in Washington DC, a recent building was put up around a single house.

The outrage across the land in the Kelo v. new London Supreme Court case has not abated. The simple reason is that no government should ever be in a position of seizing the private property of individuals to give them to developers who only seek to increase the value of their investments. There are just as many cases of the developments losing money and adversely affecting communities as there are those that benefit the locally economies of communities. The equal ratio indicates that the promises of development are no more important that any gamble on any investment, and like the securities market there is no based on guarantee of profits based historical performance..

West ave. is not a blighted area.. There is already a great many vacant retail spaces in this town, as well as office space. The only thing that Norwalk is short of is affordable housing. That’s to say not the State definition of affordable housing, but the real word definition, which I suggest is houses that people can afford to pay for, in particular property taxes. Will any of these grand redevelopment plans do anything to alleviate the property taxes of Norwalk tax payers? Is not the idea that attracting more chain retail, and more corporate tenants who bring in more traffic, and more usage of our sewer system?

These are the issues that should concern us all.