The Cottonwood City Council is opening the door to using its powers of eminent domain to take property currently standing in the way of the city’s 12th Street improvement project.
The city has been working to add sidewalks and drainage improvements to the area but that effort hit a snag because a landowner hasn’t agreed to negotiate a price for providing the city with easements needed to continue the project.
It’s an unfamiliar situation for City Council, which hasn’t often had to take legal action to condemn property for reasons like this.
Condemnation in this sense refers to the legal act of employing eminent domain, not marking property as uninhabitable.
“We’ve been remarkably successful in working with landowners across the 12th Street project,” Cottonwood City Attorney Steve Horton told the council at its July 15 meeting. “We’ve hit a bit of a roadblock.”
The property needed involves a few thousand square feet for drainage easements, sidewalk easements and a temporary construction easement.
To read the full story, see the Wednesday, July 23, edition of the Cottonwood Journal Extra.
