The moral of this story is that when you set out to buy a high-priced car you’ll need more than a golf cart budget. This is the lesson being learned the hard way by the Borough of Harvey Cedars which set out to take by eminent domain a bunch of easements over ocean front land in order to build artificial dunes. The problem, however, was two-fold. First, the dunes would block the view of beachfront homes thus lowering their value substantially, and second, the Borough budgeted only $300 for each easement acquisition. Bad idea!
The Borough has since learned that beachfront land is expensive. The per-home verdicts rendered so far have come in as follows: $282,000, $265,000, $480,ooo (that one settled for $150,000), and $400,000. On top of that, the Borough had to spend $650,000 in attorneys’ fees (the last figure is only through 2008, so the total must be higher than that by now).
True enough, some of the owners asked for a lot as demonstrated by that $150,000 settlement of a $480,000 verdict, but hey man, three hundred bucks for an easement that blocks water view of beachfront property?! Were they trying to be funny?
As of now, the Borough is talking about appealing, but given the consistency of the orders of magnitude by which those verdicts exceed the Borough’s paltry $300 per home offer, it’s hard to be critical of the owners. In the meantime, the Borough Mayor is worrying about bankruptcy, being as the Borough’s annual budget is $3 million. So here is another lesson that even if you are the government, you have to live within your means, and, like it or not, there may be some things you just can’t afford.
For the full PressofAtlanticCity.com story reporting this caper (Donna Weaver, Harvey Cedars Paid $547,000 to Homeowners Last Month Over 2008 Beach-Fill Project), click here.