60 Minutes did a story on the Eminent Domain issue here in Lakewood, Ohio. The city wants to get rid of existing home and businesses and have a developer create a shopping center and some condos. A few of the locals are objecting to this quite strongly, saying the city is just trying to grab their very nice views of a nearby park. In order to use eminent domain in this manner the city had to use some dubious definitions for the neighbourhood in question.

But the condos can't go up unless the city can remove the Saleets and their neighbors through eminent domain. And to legally invoke eminent domain, the city had to certify that this scenic park area is, really, 'blighted.'

"We're not blighted. This is an area that we absolutely love. This is a close-knit, beautiful neighborhood. It's what America's all about," says Jim Saleet. "And, Mike, you don't know how humiliating this is to have people tell you, 'You live in a blighted area,' and how degrading this is."

'The term 'blighted' is a statutory word,' says Cain the mayor. "It is, it really doesn't have a lot to do with whether or not your home is painted ... Statutory term that is used to describe an area. The question is whether or not that area can be used for a higher and better use."

But what’s higher and better than a home? "The term 'blight' is used to describe whether or not the structures generally in an area meet today's standards," says Cain.

And it's the city that sets those standards, so Lakewood set a standard for blight that would include most of the homes in the neighborhood. A home could be considered blighted, says Jim Saleet, if it doesn't have the following: three bedrooms, two baths, an attached two-car garage and central air.

"This community's over 100 years old. Who has all those things? That's the criteria. And it's ridiculous," says Jim Saleet. "And, by the way, we got up at a meeting and told the mayor and all seven council members, their houses are blighted, according to this criteria."

The Mayor looked a bit like a pinned moth answering Mike's questions on the blighted issue. I don't think it should add up to a problem for her in the upcoming Mayoral election because the leading candidate against her voted for the same measure. that being said, no one can make a stupid idea sound intelligent, even without pit-bull Mile Wallace all over you. The city has to be able to develop land for the good of the city, but they seem to be executing this one as badly as possible.