Naturally, Jim Roos spent last Saturday collecting signatures. He’s been working intensively on the eminent domain abuse issue for at least the last nine years, and Saturday was his last chance to get the needed signatures in the First Congressional District. So he spent the day in Florissant, where the annual Valley of the Flowers parade attracted thousands of people.

But despite how tiring that had been, Roos woke at midnight Saturday night, fretting, needing to do something. He decided to join the volunteers who were organizing and boxing the signatures in a room at the Drury Inn on Hampton. He drove there and worked until 8:00 Sunday morning, when the work was done.

By then, the group knew they had the signatures they needed. He says that saying goodbye to Homer Tourkakis, who just lost on appeal his suit against the city of Arnold, was emotional. Tears were shed, tears of relief and happiness.

In fact, those tens of thousands of signatures were so precious to the people involved that they considered paying Wells Fargo to deliver them to the Secretary of State’s office. After the–I don’t know about blood–but certainly sweat and tears required to fill those boxes with signed petitions, they can be excused for feeling a bit paranoid. In the end, though, Wells Fargo didn’t get the business. The group delivered the boxes themselves.

And Jim says he went home Sunday morning and mowed the lawn, grateful to have time to do something so ordinary. Cutting the grass was a pleasure.

He deserves time for (and the fun of?) mowing the grass. The road to sending those signatures to Jeff City began, for him, twenty years ago, the first time he found himself losing property in the city of St.Louis to eminent domain. Now he and the others involved–like Ron Calzone, who has headed the effort statewide–can breathe a little, at least until the group sees whether or not they’ll face much organized opposition from cities that don’t want to lose the option of taking people’s land.

Most of the volunteers are people who’ve faced losing property under eminent domain, but Roos says not all are. One, Cliff Underwood, for example, collected 1,075 signatures–not because he’s ever personally faced losing property but because he simply feels it’s wrong for a city to force someone to sell his land and then give it to a developer so he can make money.

The company that the eminent domain group contracted with to help them collect signatures, National Ballot Access, was impressed with the volunteers the group attracted. NBA staff told Roos they had never seen so many volunteers for a petition initiative.

Roos was still flying high when I talked to him a few minutes ago, alternating between excitement and quavering on the edge of tears. He and the others involved have earned their joy and satisfaction.

If you’re interested in helping MEDAC collect signatures for a constitutional amendment banning eminent domain as it is now being (mis)used, join people collecting signatures on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

On monday 1-21,  a MLKing celebration, civic ceremony, begins 10:00 at 4th and Market.  About 11:00 some people march from that ceremony to Powell Symphony Hall on Grand Ave, across from the Fox theater.  About 12:30 there is an interfaith service at Powell Hall.  Many people come early and directly to Powell Hall.  I think we can collect signatures inside Powell Hall.   I will be there by 11:00 with extra petitions, buttons, shirts, pens.  Come about 11:00 if you need materials and instructions.  Came about 11:30 if you are already equiped and familiar with the process.  We can stay for the service and collect signatures after the service.  

Any questions, leave message at 771-3509 and I will return your call before 10:00 on Monday.  

Jim Roos  

For twenty years, Jim Roos owned a three-family home in the 3000 block of Lafayette in St. Louis.  It wasn’t a good neighborhood.  In fact, his rental property sat in the middle of what was practically a moonscape of burned out and collapsing buildings.  There were a few other homes still standing, but some of them were used as drug dealing bases.

Still, Roos and another nearby property owner soldiered on, making improvements to the houses they owned–he added a porch and fenced the backyard–and regularly contacting the police about the drug dealers.  A redevelopment plan was proposed, but it sat on the books for ten years.  Meanwhile, redevelopment did take hold on a small scale in that neighborhood–enough to tempt the people who’d gotten the original plan through the Board of Aldermen to perk up and take an interest.  Now that the neighborhood was becoming viable again, that developer wanted the vacant properties–and Roos’s house.

Roos battled city hall, even to picketing his alderman’s house.  To no avail.  He was forced to sell that property.  But the experience turned him into a crusader against eminent domain abuse.  He is part of a group called MEDAC, which is aiming to collect 250,000 signatures by the first week in May to get an initiative on the 2008 ballot for two constitutional amendments.  Those amendments would forbid taking property by eminent domain for any private use and would forbid using eminent domain to remove blight.

That word “blight” is like the word “many”.  How much is many?  Three?  Fifteen?  Fifty thousand?  What’s blight?  The law doesn’t define it.  And even if it did, why should that developer be allowed to take Roos’s un-blighted rental property after Jim had hung in through thick and thin for twenty years?

In fact, it used to be that no developer could take a person’s property by eminent domain in Missouri.  The Bill of Rights forbade it:  “Private property shall not be taken for private use with or without compensation unless by consent of the owner.”  That was in the good ole days.

But about fifty years ago, the Missouri Constitution was amended to read:  “Blighted, substandard or insanitary areas may be taken by eminent domain for redevelopment.”  The key word, “areas”, let the genie out of the bottle because it allowed developers not only to take property, but to take the good property along with the bad.  The genie’s been up to a lot of mischief since  that amendment pulled the cork on his bottle.

The debacle in Sunset Hills in 2004 brought the abuses to public attention.  The doom of those property owners was apparently sealed, even as they fought the buyout, by a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2005 (Suzette Kelo v. New London, CT), which ruled that it was constitutional to take Kelo’s property as part of a waterfront redevelopment project, even though the property was not blighted. Eventually, public outcry caused the developer in the Sunset Hills havoc to lose his financing.  But much of the damage could not be repaired.

The legislature took a stab at it last year, but lawmakers still allowed as how it was fine to take good property from an unwilling seller as long as 51 percent of the property in that area was “blighted.”  In that respect, the legislature failed to do what was needed.

They did forbid declaring rural areas blighted and taking property solely for economic development. Those two requirements have been helpful.  In fact, it was the requirement banning use of eminent domain solely for economic development that saved property owners in Clayton from being forced to sell to Centene.

Despite those improvements wrought by the ’06 law,  the folks at MEDAC learned that the legislative process is not the way to go if they want reform.  Only a constitutional amendment will protect Missouri’s property owners for certain.  So you’ll find them on weekends at community events seeking signatures.

They’ll be at Francis Park near Chippewa and Hampton this Sunday afternoon for the “Art in the Park” event, and they’ll be at the Soulard Market Festival Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 6 and 7.  Anyone who wants more information can call Roos at 771-3509.