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EDITORIAL: Property Owner Should Be Able to Utilize Land

Posted on: Thursday, 2 February 2006, 09:00 CST

By The Sun, Yuma, Ariz.

Feb. 2--A dispute over private property rights is developing near the Yuma airport as plans for airport expansion collide with the plans of a property owner to use nearby land. The point of contention is a request to the Yuma Planning and Zoning Commission from a California-based company to subdivide 32 acres it owns next to the airport into 40 parcels that would be used for light industrial development. The Yuma County Airport Authority plans to protest the request because it conflicts with a expansion plan approved by the authority last year that would increase the airport's size and expand its facilities over a 20-year period. The airport authority has a dilemma. It wants to lock up land near the airport for the expansion but doesn't have the money to do it. It sought $2 million last year from the state to buy the 32 acres in question, but didn't get it. If it cannot acquire that property and some 34 more acres of land, the plans for expansion of the airport for future needs will be short-circuited. But there is a dilemma for the property owner, too, that cannot be ignored. Should the property owner be expected to simply hold on to valuable land that is in demand so that the airport at some point in the future can be expanded? That is the equivalent of taking the land without providing the required compensation, at least until some unknown point in the future. That is unfair and unconstitutional. The property owner has no obligation to hold the land for the airport's use. Therefore if the airport authority is going to oppose the desires of the property owner to subdivide and use the land, as it has indicated it will, then it needs to come up with a way to compensate the property owner now, not in the future. The same is true of any other land the airport wants for expansion.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Sun, Yuma, Ariz.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: The Sun (Yuma, Ariz.)

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