Blog Brings Neighborly Conversation: David Pitts Sets Record Straight

One of the greatest merits of blogging is that it gets me into conversations that might never otherwise happen... often with people who vigorously disagree with me. Sometimes that conversation happens online, sometimes off.

Sometimes it's a two-and-a-half-hour conversation with a fellow Lake County resident whose language I have called "selfish, inconsistent, and at least unneighborly if not insulting."

David Pitts called Thursday evening.

From the top: Mr. Pitts called to ensure that at least two issues were straightened out:

1. Contrary to the characterization I gave in my original article on the bike trail the city wants to build across the land he farms on the southwest edge of Madison, David Pitts and his wife Gloria do not live in or by Ramona. They lived up in that neck of the woods for a long time, and Mrs. Pitts was postmaster in Ramona, but a year or so ago, they moved into Madison. David Pitts is a taxpaying resident of the city that wants a piece of his farm land.
   
2. Mr. Pitts also felt I dismissed his arguments against the bike trail and said he should have just said no. (I believe he may be referencing this passage from my Oct. 22 post: "I have deep sympathy for arguments in defense of personal property. If Mr. Pitts wishes to simply say, "It's my land, and I don't want to sell," that's fine.") Mr. Pitts emphasized that he had already told the powers that be "No" to this project five times—six, if you count the open house we both attended last week.

Mr. Pitts and I have lived in the same county for my whole life. He's my dad's age; his son Gary graduated from Madison HS a year before I did. It took this long for the two of us to end up in the same room last week, two feet apart over the same maps. But even there, David and I didn't talk. He had more important people at whom to direct his questions and concerns than a strange skinny guy with a backpack. I went to the meeting to listen, not argue. I checked my rebuttive urges until I had slept on what I'd heard a couple nights. Then I published a pretty stern critique that I knew wouldn't go down well with some readers.

Mr. Pitts said he was pretty steamed when a copy of the text reached him. When the phone rang and he introduced himself, I was ready for steam and checking my own valves. But we never got hot with each other. For two and a half hours, we had a perfectly neighborly and serious conversation about property rights, farming, bike trails, and local government.

Mr. Pitts and I still disagree on the value of a bike trail. I've given my reasons; let me give Mr. Pitts's view some air time so we all—including some of the folks who are more committed to building this bike trail than I am—can better understand where he's coming from.

Mr. Pitts has lived in this county all his life, just like me. His great-grandfather homesteaded here back in 1880, beating my forebears to this turf by a good 60+ years. He says he wants to see the land he has in this county remain in the family. He has at least as much reason for attachment to his patches of Lake County as I have to mine.

Mr. Pitts has honest concerns about the mingling of recreation and industrial agriculture. He sustains his land and productivity with heavy equipment and big chemicals. The big sprayer drivers and the crop dusters are as stingy as they can be with those expensive chemicals, but there will always be some drift. Right now, Mr. Pitts sees the fenceline, ditch, and raised roadway as a reasonable buffer to harm to passersby. Invite them onto the other side of that ditch on a ribbon of asphalt, and Mr. Pitts says his effective operating area will be reduced much more than the width of the trail and a flat strip of grass next to it.

(I did suggest going organic; Mr. Pitts said it would take too long to cycle the land into alternative production methods and turn a profit again.)

I haven't seen case law to justify Mr. Pitts's concerns about his liability for injuries on a trail crossing his land (and I'm reading up on SDCL 20-9 to see if it applies). But Mr. Pitts's concerns are reinforced by a grim experience on his land 22 years ago. His son went hunting with a couple other boys. Those other boys were walking the creek bed, one on each side, while Mr. Pitts's son waited at the end of the creek. A pheasant flew between the two walkers. One boy turned, shot from the hip.

There were 110 pellets in the shell that boy fired. The doctor took 97 pellets out of the other boy.

Mr. Pitts's liability insurance paid for the boy's medical bills. He was thankful worse didn't happen. But his insurer told him that, if he had charged a fee for the use of his land, his liability would have been much greater. So now, when the city asks him to accept payment for a recreational trail on his land, he puts two and two together and gets a concern informed by grim experience about having to pay for others' accidents.

Now as a businessman, Mr. Pitts could probably find out what the additional cost of liability insurance might be to cover the additional use his land would experience with a bike trail on it. He could add that to an estimate of the bushels of corn or beans lost to a 3-6 acre strip of pavement and grass. He would then have a good picture of what the city would have to offer to make the trail easement worth his while.

But interestingly, the city and other organizers have not once made a formal offer. No officials have told Mr. Pitts what the city will be willing to pay for the privilege of laying a trail on his land. In his dealings with the city, Mr. Pitts has gotten the distinct feeling that the city is more like a bully than a partner or the entity whose bills he pays with his taxes.

Cases in point: When the first proposal for a trail to Lake Herman started floating around a few years ago, Mr. Pitts says a trail organizer asked if they could sit down and discuss the plan over coffee. Mr. Pitts said he could do that some time... but he didn't hear anything else on the topic until a county commission meeting that considered applying for the grant to build the trail. Mr. Pitts says trail supporters considered circulating a petition seeking support to obtain land for the trail "by any means necessary" even before making any straightforward financial offers to landowners like him.

Mr. Pitts also notes that, as he understood it, the federal grant eventually obtained to trail up the neighborhood was designated for a trail along Highway 34. However (and this is all grapevine and no documentation, but I'm giving Mr. Pitts his say here), he heard that some of the bigger businesses along Highway 34 west of town didn't want the trail crossing their lots, and the city backed off that plan. So Mr. Pitts can't help getting the feeling that the city is just shopping around for little guys like him to push around.

His experience with the surveyors this spring didn't inspire any further confidence in our city leaders. With little warning, Mr. Pitts received a letter from Ulteig Engineering saying they would be coming onto his land to survey along the creek for a possible trail. Having just put in his wheat, Mr. Pitts was not eager to have surveyors tearing through his field on a four-wheeler. He called Ulteig, expressed his opposition, and apparently got them to call off the survey.

Soon afterward, however, he received another letter, this one from Madison's city attorney, Mr. Jencks, saying surveyors would be entering his land under statutory authority. Mr. Pitts couldn't remember the statute number in our conversation, but he says that when he showed his lawyer the letter, the lawyer looked up the law and found it dealt with abandoned mines and still required owner permission. Another phone call, another cancellation... but this time not before marking flags had been set in Mr. Pitts's field. Those flags are on wires. Leave one in the field, and it will run right through the combine and into the straw. Feed that straw to livestock, have a cow chaw down that wire, and that wire could kill the animal. Mr. Pitts thus spent some extra time in the field picking up flags to make sure what he sees as an unauthorized entry on his land didn't also result in the loss of a valuable critter.

Given what Mr. Pitts told me Thursday night, it's not hard to construct a narrative where, far from being the bad guy, Mr. Pitts is the average little guy, just trying to make a living and keep his land for himself and his kids while the powers that be—powers who wages he's paid for years with his sales tax and now property tax dollars—try to push him around.

So maybe we can understand a little better why Mr. Pitts might be inclined to offer some stiff resistance to a plan that could lead to the city taking his land. And in the face of such resistance, maybe we'll have to accept a compromise and live with widening the county road for a less-than-ideal but better-than-current bike route.

That's a discussion we as a community need to have. The best decisions will come from an open, above-board discussion where everyone, including David Pitts, gets a say.

A Bike Trail Is Not a Pipeline: Where I Don't Stand on Eminent Domain

Sibby cuts to to the heart of an issue that I've been grappling with myself on the proposed Lake Herman bike trail:

During the TransCanada pipeline issue, you took what I thought was a pro-property rights position. But now it is obvious that you are not for property rights. So your TransCanada position must have been based soley on your radical environmental ideological worldview [Steve Sibson, comment, Madville Times, 2009.10.25].

Steve isn't the only Sibson whom I expected to brand me as an ideological traitor, and I've been mighty nervous about that very prospect. I have been very vocal in my opposition to the use of eminent domain and my defense of personal property rights for everyone from the farmers and ranchers along the Keystone pipeline and DM&E rail routes to Madison's own Dick Wiedenman. Yet I have characterized farmer David Pitts's language in defense of his property rights against encroachment by a bike trail as "selfish, inconsistent, and at least unneighborly if not insulting."

Sibby and Jason Bjorklund both rightly ask, What gives?

Review the record: at no point have I said I support taking David Pitts's land or anyone else's by eminent domain for the proposed bike trail. I've said previously that I oppose using eminent domain to build a bike trail. When I heard folks talking about the prospect of resorting to eminent domain for this project, my heart sank.

But let's get clear on one thing: TransCanada's use of eminent domain to build the Keystone pipeline is very different from the potential use of eminent domain to build the bike trail to Lake Herman.

1. The TransCanada land grab transferred land rights from various private parties to another private party. Eminent domain for this bike trail would transfer private land rights to the general public.
2. TransCanada took land under the flimsy claim that its pipeline is a "common carrier," a notion I find laughable, since TransCanada is the only party making direct use of the pipeline. The Lake Herman bike trail would be open to use by all residents and visitors alike.
3. TransCanada's Keystone pipeline provides no direct benefit to any landowner whose land has been taken for the pipeline easement or to any adjoining community. A much stronger case can be made that the bike trail provides direct benefits to the community: increased tourism, increased sales tax revenue, more recreational activities, and safer bike and pedestrain travel in town and to and from Lake Herman State Park (and I'm not even working hard to think up those advantages). Even the landowner stands to benefit—I will posit that direct access to a bike trail increases the sale value of the land for residential and commercial development. (Real estate agents, feel free to chime in with your perspective!)
   

It is also important to note that we aren't even at the eminent domain stage yet. David Pitts sure makes it sound like he won't sell, no way, no how... but his position may be nothing more than hardball negotiation to squeeze from the city every penny he can get. I have no problem with driving a hard bargain to get the best market price possible, and from the sounds of it, the city will likely offer a price significantly better than market value to make this project happen.

As I said to Jason, I don't stand to benefit much personally from the bike trail. The shortest route for me to ride to town will still be Highway 34... and contrary to Mr. Pitts's opinion that I have all the time in the world, when it's 0°F, I want my ride to be as quick as possible.

I don't need a bike trail. I don't need David Pitts's land to get to class or the park or anywhere else I ride.

However, I can look beyond myself. I can recognize that a lot of casual cyclists don't feel comfortable going pedal-to-gas-pedal with texting teen drivers and rumbling semis. I can recognize that plenty of campers feel a bit uneasy taking their kids on a bike ride to town on a county road with no shoulder. And I can recognize that bicycle tourists won't make an extra trip to Madison just ride on the shoulder of a highway.

I hope Mr. Pitts will look at both his self-interest and the public interest and realize that expanding the right-of-way easement on his land can serve both. He can make a guaranteed pot of money up front and still sell his land for development, quite possibly at a better price. He can also pave the way for increased recreational opportunities and tourism that will benefit everyone in the county. The Lake Herman bike trail is a win-win situation. We shouldn't need eminent domain to make it happen.

But if Mr. Pitts can't see that, if he fails to see how he himself comes out ahead on this deal, the city will have to make a very clear and evidenced case that the public benefits of the bike trail outweigh the personal property rights of Mr. Pitts and the other landowners along the proposed route. I await the making of that case.

Landowner Bashes Bicyclists, Burbles Baloney at Bike Trail Meeting

Madison's recreation trail committee held an open house for residents to learn about the proposed route for a new bicycle trail to Lake Herman. The new trail would run west from Flynn Field along Silver Creek in the south part of Madison. The trail would cross Highland Avenue near Gehl, run south to the old NFO corner, then cross the road and run straight west to the state park entrance. (No formal plans yet to add the full 7.5-mile Lake Herman Loop... but I'm working on that!)

About 30 of us (I think Chuck might have included the engineers and local officials in his count) gathered in Madison's fire hall for the meeting to study the maps and ask questions of the patient engineers from Ulteig.

I say patient because the engineers had to stand through a fair amount of old-guy crabbing and small-town politicking. I heard one gentleman reciting his decades-old grievances about selling his land in southwest Madison for dirt cheap so Gehl could get built and then geting surprise bills for curb and gutter. The gentleman's point was a general assertion about not trusting the city on projects like this. The engineers listened politely and nodded as they eagerly awaited some actual engineering questions.

More bothersome to my ear were the protestations of David Pitts, who drives down from Ramona to farm the 150-some acres he owns across the road from Gehl and Madison's southwest corner. The proposed route would slice maybe three acres off that cropland. Pitts was a vocal opponent of a previous push to build a rec trail to Lake Herman, and he's renewing his protests over this effort.

I want to sympathize with Mr. Pitts's concern for his property rights. However, much of what I heard him say Tuesday night was, frankly, bull.

Pitts told the engineers (who again, did a lot of patient listening to matters that aren't their job to deal with) that he can't stop his combine on a dime to avoid a bike trail. His point is that he's going to lose a lot more cropland than the ten-foot ribbon of asphalt will take up. If I recall the map correctly, there would be a ten-foot easement next to the trail.

But if I recall correctly, when my wife and I rode the bicycle trail from the Lewis and Clark campground in to Yankton this summer, we found corn pretty close to the trail. Perhaps Pitts can drive down to Yankton for lessons on precision tractor driving.

Pitts told the engineers that it just doesn't make sense to situate recreation next to industry (industry meaning David Pitts). What Pitts fails to acknowledge is that recreation is also an industry, one on which our Chamber of Commerce stakes pretty big hopes (the town logo features a sailboat, not a combine). A bike trail to Lake Herman State park would be a key part of our local tourism industry, encouraging campers and day-tourists to come to Madison, ride and roller-blade around, and spend money. Infrastructure doesn't have to support big trucks to support business. (Read more on the value of recreation and public facilities in the city's comprehensive plan, Chapter 6.)

Pitts told the engineers that originally the city had proposed laying a bike trail along Highway 34, as evidenced by the little strip of trail out by Prairie Village on the old roadway. He seemed to say the city should go back to that plan. Never mind, of course, that a bike trail along Highway 34 would pass through even more industrial land, crossing driveways and taking up parking and workspace for Lake County International, Twin Lakes Veterinary, East River Electric, Tires Tires Tires, and several other businesses. Pitts doesn't really think it's a bad idea to have recreation next to industry or even a whole bunch of industries; he just doesn't want it near his single industry.

Pitts expressed his general disdain for bicyclists (and, I assume, anyone he might see dawdling about on a recreation trail), saying that "anyone who's got time to sit on a bicycle" has got time to take some longer route—i.e., some route not on his land. There were other implications in his tone of voice, the kind of implication that says, "I'm an important citizen, and you other guys aren't."

It is with difficulty that I restrict myself to noting that Mr. Pitts's characterization of bicyclists misses the point that many such individuals who have time for recreation also have money to spend. They'll buy drinks and ice cream in town. They'll buy gas and tires for their campers. They'll buy bikes and kiddie trailers and rollerblades and windbreakers and other sales-taxable gear. They'll rent campsites and motel rooms to come spend time in a town that offers a wealth of recreation opportunities.

Mr. Pitts also misses the point that even folks without a lot of disposable income can benefit greatly from a free recreational facility like a bike trail. Rich or poor, families can take their kids out for a walk or a tricycle ride on a summer evening, away from the dust and noise of trucks on the highway.

Mr. Pitts clearly thinks recreation doesn't deserve any favors from his industry. Of course, Mr. Pitts's industry benefits from the generosity of a community (and a state) that exempts some of his clearly commercial vehicles from commerical vehicle licensing laws. He might not be in a good position to protest "favoring" one industry over another.

I have deep sympathy for arguments in defense of personal property. If Mr. Pitts wishes to simply say, "It's my land, and I don't want to sell," that's fine. But when he manufactures arguments against public infrastructure couched in selfish, inconsistent, and at least unneighborly if not insulting language, he doesn't help his case.

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Update 2009.11.02: Count on the blog to spark neighborly conversation: David Pitts called me last week, and we had a good 2+ hour discussion. Read his take on the story, complete with his suggestion that the city has been a less-than-straight shooter.