2010 Georgia Ballot Amendment 5 – VOTE YES
by Bill Simon
AMENDMENT 5 – Amend Constitution To Allow All Property Owners To Be Treated Equally
Amendment 5 is a tad confusing when you read it, but upon research into the way the Constitution is currently written, I realized that this amendment correctly rectifies a previous amendment (either passed back in 1877 or 1945) that was written long ago by some Bubba Gumps who only conceived of a possibility of real property being located on a Georgia island (i.e., one surrounded by water) being suddenly designated as “industrial” by a state or municipality and causing their real property to go from being worth something to a potential value of negative infinity to $0.00.
All this requires is that if the property is suddenly designated to be part of an “industrial zone” that the property owner has the power to file a certificate in the superior court to convert that property to either be annexed into the city currently providing water service to it, or (if there is no water service to the property) to the municipality that serves the nearest fire station that is in the protection zone of that real property.
Before this amendment, the state constitution only allows owners of property sitting on islands to be given this capability. All this amendment does is allow equal rights to all property owners who, in one moment, can have their property designated as X, but the next moment some municipality decides to designate it as an industrial area, and render it unsalable or unusable.
I view this as providing equal rights to all property owners, regardless of whether that property is located on an island or not (and, how many islands, exactly, are there in Georgia?).
PV Recommends: Vote YES on Amendment 5
October 21st, 2010 at 12:52 pm
Yea, I agree. Let’s recognize private property rights and our right to do as we see fit with such.