A rush to
expand
in Auburn
Auburn’s Lake Street School is a busy school on a tiny lot in a quiet neighborhood. Students need expanded facilities but neighbors want to preserve their properties. It’s a classic impasse with legitimate pressures and demands on each side.
Enter the specter of eminent domain.
The very idea that government can take private property by eminent domain is galling to landowners, but it is a constitutional right afforded government so long as landowners are justly compensated and so long as the taking is for public use.
That doesn’t always happen.
There are thousands of examples of eminent domain abuses across the United States where government has used its public power to take private property to aid developers and other private interests.
Maine is well protected against these abuses because state law prevents government from transferring property “from one private owner to another” and permits property owners to reclaim property if government does not make use of it within eight years after seizure.
Even so, lawful seizures warrant attention.
Eminent domain has been mentioned in connection with the expansion of Lake Street School, arousing appropriate concern in the community.
While no formal City Council vote has been held to take property, school officials have approached abutters about selling and there was a neighborhood meeting last week to talk about expanding the 145-pupil school to accommodate another 155 students.
Not every neighbor wants to sell, but if the public good of school expansion is determined to be greater than the desires of private landowners, the city can take the property. Auburn demonstrated its willing to use the power of eminent domain during construction of the Riverwalk.
The situation in the Lake Street neighborhood is edgy.
Neighbors are properly frustrated with what they view as inadequate communication from school administrators.
It wasn’t until the April 15 meeting that the Building Committee considered adding neighbors to its mix, which indicates the school district does not view the Lake Street School expansion as a partnership between educators and taxpayers.
It is.
This is a neighborhood school, a shrinking commodity in an age of regionalization. Neighbors have a vested interest in what happens – in the classroom where children spend their days and in the committee room where costs and policies are set.
If the school is expanded, abutters will lose property.
If the school is not expanded, older students will continue to commute to Walton and Sherwood Heights.
The neighborhood has an interest in the outcome, whatever is decided.
School administrators recognized that at last week’s meeting and have since delayed the public hearing that had been scheduled for May 8, which could interfere with the school’s timetable to bring the issue before voters in November and start construction in the spring.
The delay may slow the process, but the public good will be better served by this pause in sensitivity to concerns voiced by private citizens. Then, if the determination is made to invoke eminent domain, at least citizens will have been properly heard.
jmeyer@sunjournal.com
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