Kelo New London Wrap: $70 Million-Plus Is a Lot of Money for a Few Empty Blocks
Previous Posts:
- June 30 — Kelo New London: It’s Over
- June 26 — Barriers to a Finalized Deal Remain (also includes links to all previous posts back to August 2005)
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The city has applied for, and will certainly receive, the money it needs to complete their settlements with the final two Kelo holdouts (link requires registration, and will require subscription on July 23) and New London’s City Council approved the deal (link requires registration, and will require subscription after today).
Council was especially “accommodating” at their meeting on July 10:
The council vote also waived use and occupancy fees, dating to the 2000 property takings, for Kelo and Cristofaro, which the council had previously authorized City Law Director Thomas Londregan to collect.
Considering what jerks they were last summer, that was awfully nice of them (/sarcasm).
As to the settlement money, it looks like the City applied just in time:
The money is part of the $1.4 million in unspent funds from the state Department of Economic and Community Development that remained set aside for the NLDC’s redevelopment of Fort Trumbull as of March — all that remained of a $73 million state investment in the project.
Taken in isolation from the Supreme Court decision, which was a nationwide “win” for the eminent-domain tyrants, it’s hard to see how New London and the taxpayers of Connecticut are better off today than they were before this conflict began.
