PB: Some folks just don’t support property rights.
by SDM
Yesterday, SDM discussed a wrong-headed Miami Herald soapbox letter written by the Chair of the Charter Revision Commission, Bev Gerald. See PB: Who’s zoomin’ who?
Today, SDM looks at two other letters to Sunday’s soapbox. Following its custom, SDM will not name the authors of these letters because, unlike Ms. Gerald, these folks do not hold any elected or appointed Palmetto Bay office as far as SDM is aware.
The two comments below demonstrate a misunderstanding of property rights under the U.S. and Florida constitutions:
For example, many Palmetto Bay residents petitioned the village to protect them from Palmer-Trinity’s huge expansion of facilities and explosion in student enrollment. The council responded to preserve the quality of life its residents. Palmer-Trinity sued, causing the village to spend money to defend its decision. To base a recall effort on “costly litigation” is to discourage and intimidate free democratic expression.
The recent ruling by the courts in favor of Palmer Trinity expansion is a prime example of government interfering in citizens’ private lives. When a petition is voted down by our elected officials and the court overturns to support what benefits a business instead of the resident’s quality of life, something is wrong. (Emphasis added by SDM.)
A tension exists between and among the rights of property owners. On the one hand, our country and state have enshrined in their constitutions, laws, and in court opinions strong protections against the very thing these authors endorse.
Namely, a property owner’s rights must be governed not by petitions delivered when a development plan is submitted to the governing authority but at the time that the general laws regulating the property are adopted. The idea is that property owners must be able to use their property for the permissible uses the government grants to like-situated owners.
There is a mechanism for the government to interfere with these property rights. The government may acquire the property through condemnation and payment to the owner. Alternatively, the government can regulate property using its police powers.
However, the regulations adopted by the local government must comply with federal and state constitutional and statutory laws as interpreted by the courts – the common law. Furthermore, government regulation must be in place before an application is received so that the owner has sufficient notice before placing her money at risk.
On the other hand, property owners in a neighborhood or commercial area have a right to maintain their property values and uses in the face of owners whose uses threaten them. But, as SDM has shown, the village council’s authority is circumscribed and limited and these limits preserve the individual’s rights in the face of mob rule.
SDM has never said the SOPs have no right to petition the government for the Neighborhood Preservation and Compatibilty Ordinance or for the Neighborhood Protection Charter Amendment. What SDM has said is that both of these pieces of legislation are wrong-headed and overbroad and, therefore, are likely to subject the village to lawsuits contesting them. Such contra-petitioning is SDM’s constitutional right, too.
Before we close up shop for today, SDM wants to share one more paragraph from the second soapbox author. This quote demonstrates the absurdity of the anti-school and anti-church arguments advocated by Palmetto Bay’s special interest groups:
The recent ruling by the courts in favor of Palmer Trinity expansion is a prime example of government interfering in citizens’ private lives. When a petition is voted down by our elected officials and the court overturns to support what benefits a business instead of the resident’s quality of life, something is wrong.
The reason this country has courts of law is to do precisely what this writer seems to despise: to limit the authority of the state with respect to individual property owners. What’s troubling to SDM, however, is the attempt by the author to use the term “business” as a kind of slur. It is almost as if this writer is channeling President Obama.
Palmer is a religious school and a non-profit that is operated, ostensibly, like a business, but its purpose is philanthropic and eleemosynary. In its dealings with Palmetto Bay, this non-profit business was right on the law, which is why the court found for them.
SDM Says: If you believe in limiting the government’s ability to interfere in citizens’ private lives, then you should support the court’s ruling in Palmer.
EXACTLY ON POINT!!! Can I copy your words and submit them to SoapBox? I’ll name myself Sodade Matters!
You flatter SDM. Take what you wish but be advised that SDM warrants nothing.
Bev Gerald and Marsha Matson are two of the most liberal leaning individuals that I know. They would never stand up for property rights. Bev worked in the public sector for the Miami Beach Attorney’s office and then for the school board as an aid to Evelyn Greer. Marsha works for one of those not-for-profit schools, that she is complaining about. Yes folks, she works for the University of Miami. I sure hope the next time that UM goes before the Coral Gables City Commission to expand its facilities, that Marsha jumps right up and objects. How long do you think she will keep her job?
These two are:
NIMBYs – Not in my Back Yard
CAVEs – Citizens against virtually everything
BANANAs – Build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone
Enough already, lets have some progress for our Village.
The University of Miami is a private FOR-PROFIT university. Religious schools are for profit also. Property rights are supposed to be for individuals not collectives. A school is a building and place where children are educated. A school is not a human being and therefore has no natural rights only privileges granted by the government. The community has a right to decide what gets built when it affects the residents of that community. Only corporatists support “rights” for corporations and other collectives.
Expansion of a business has nothing to do with “government interfering in citizens private lives”. A person’s private life is about what people do in the privacy of their own HOMES. Businesses on the other hand affect a lot of other people so they have to be regulated by the state or residents of the community in which the business operates.
Mr Shlackman has no clue as to property rights. One would think he is an anarchist, but that would allow schools to flourish and he is obviously anti-education. What a tortured soul. He should really educate himself on property law before he makes a fool of himself again. His rant is unsupported by the law. He should read the Palmer Court decisions as well as the prior case law and statutory that those decisions are based upon. People do not have a collective right to dictate what others do with their property. UM is a NOT FOR PROFIT university. People may get paid, my communist friend, but that does not change the legal corporate status. Mr Shlackman should also read about the rights to the practice of religion, including religious education, guaranteed under the US Constitution.
What Mr. Shlackman, Ms. Gerald, Matson and the other Soapbox writers want is absolute authority to drive off those they disagree with and unconditional devotion from those who agree with them. They put the ‘bully’ in the bully pulpit. The ironic thing is that none of them have seen an actual pulpit for a very long time. They resent that other people who believe, so they mock them by calling houses of worship businesses. None of you have the right to judge or to prevent people from worshiping in the manner they choose. I have the right to attend a house of worship in Palmetto Bay and that includes over your objections.
“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” -Daniel Patrick Moynihan
All one must do is go to http://www.sunbiz.org and search for the University of Miami. Go here. UM’s a non-profit.
By the way, a house is not a human being either and has no natural rights. It’s rights, like the rights of a corporation, are granted by the state. A home is like a school, though, in that it is also a building where children are educated.
Not only do corporatists support rights for corporations, so does the democratically adopted law of the land at the federal, state and local level. Corporate rights flow as an exchange: human beings act under the corporate form in exchange for limitations on their individual financial liability. Thus, the corporation, rather than the individual human being, is sued in court. (SDM suggests you meet with Mayor Stanczyk for a lesson on how corporations – municipal in this instance – are held liable for their failures.)
Government regulation by definition interferes – oftentimes legitimately – with the private lives of the owners through regulation of a business. But every business owner knows that it is the business that generates the money to pay for what goes on in the privacy of the home, including the money that comes from taxing the money generated by the business. Either way, the source is the same. Thus, when government interferes with the business, it interferes with the revenue it spreads around to its favored groups. That, good sir, is called irony.
Please deposit 25 cents for your economics lesson.
“You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.” ― Harlan Ellison
Why are you all arguing with [the commenter]? [Remainder of comment deleted by SDM.]
SDM Ed. Note: Look, if your best argument is purely ad hominem, then you have no argument. Stick to the facts.
Could someone explain to me how going from 600 students on 22 acres to 1150 students on 55 acres interferes with citizens’ rights? Rights to oppose educating children? And how can you say the expansion at Southwood was OK, but a markedly less dense expansion at PTS is not OK? And how can you allow our high school public students to all be shipped to Pinecrest and beyond? (Maybe we are just the lucky ones! We don’t have to hear our children?) And if you complain about the noise, noise, noise (I keep visualizing the Grinch), tell me the time the noise will be there. 8am? No, in class. 9am, 10am, 11am, noon…still in class. 4pm to 6pm is usual practice and game time. Then everyone goes home for dinner & homework! So my green (color, not environmentalists) neighbors are complaining about 2 hours per day, 180 days a year (if that many). When I do get out of my air conditioned home between the hours of 4 and 6PM, I sometimes hear the students playing. On the weekends, I hear the parties at Bill Sadowski Park and the parties at the Village Center and Thalatta Park. Do I complain about the noise? No. Instead I remember some great parties that I attended at Sadowski…and another great one at the Village Center (no one has invited me to a Thalatta party YET!) You can focus on the negative or the positive. I hope when I get older that I don’t start thinking as negatively as some of my neighbors.
Children should never be seen or heard in Palmetto Bay under the three Amigos, A/K/A the zoning gestapo. Check out the upcomng Palmetto Bay budget. The three amigos have asked for money to purchace and operate a drone to continuously fly over the village in search of children having fun or being educated anywhere within 100 feet of a CCOCI member.