Published 01 August 2002

(word count: 750)

What good are churches anyway?  They don't hire surly clerks and pimple-faced stockers.  They don't sell blenders or trash compactors or battery powered nose hair trimmers.  They don't hawk floral arrangements and gourmet fragrance baskets online.  And the most damning indictment of all, churches just don't spew forth tax dollars like a cow vacating its bowels on a flat rock.

So why not just kick the deadbeat church off its own property and build a Costco shopping bazaar?  If they won't sell, use condemnation.  If that doesn't work, use eminent domain.  The City Council, you see, has no choice.

In case you've missed this ongoing spat, what with Britney's virgin love life and obesity victims suing McWendyKing and fresh frozen baseball hall of famers hogging all your attention, a brief synopsis follows.

Cottonwood Christian Center is guilty of owning a prime plot of real estate on a busy intersection in the city of Cypress, California.  The city of Cypress, along with many of its upstanding citizens, would rather see a worldly shopper's heaven rise upon the prime plot of real estate than a boring old church.  So the city of Cypress pushed their eminent domain button.  Cottonwood Christian Center had the audacity to push the federal injunction button.  They, after all, want to build a boring old church on their own prime plot of real estate.

Yes, this is a rights issue.  But it's not about the kinds of rights libertarians talk about when they talk about rights.  This is about the right to get what you want at somebody else's expense.

Used to be that eminent domain was all about using land for public works projects, like building a nice sewage treatment plant in your backyard or erecting a water tower so people can sprinkle their petunias and brush their teeth in the morning and flush their federally mandated low flow toilets.  No more.  Now it's all about money.  Cypress community development director David Belmer explains why this land grab is in the best interest of the community (churches, apparently, aren't community): They have a fiduciary responsibility to manage the city such that it has sufficient revenues to provide the services our residents have come to expect.  Translation: shopping malls pay taxes, boring old churches don't.  Kick the deadbeats out.

But don't those upstanding citizens of Cypress have rights, too?  You bet they do, and this quote from an article in the Orange County Register makes that abundantly clear: But Cypress residents say their quality of life is at stake.  And they mirror the views of some city officials: What about residents' rights to new jobs, quality services and convenient shopping?

Got that, all you rights-obsessed libertarians out there?  People have a right to jobs, a right to services, a right to convenient shopping, but not a right to keep their own property.  Kick the deadbeats out.

But don't feel sorry for Cottonwood Christian Center.  They're the bad guys in all of this.  Pete Kinnahan, a Cypress resident who supports the Costco coup attempt became quote-of-the-day material in the Register when he explained why.  My neighbors and I have been watching this go on for two years, and we're tired of this big church trying to bully the city by busing its members in from all around the county to harass our City Council.

Imagine that.  A flock of Christians bullying and harassing a poor city council for the simple right to keep their own property.  How un-American.

And Costco ain't the bad guys either.  Costco real estate negotiator Greg Vena first looked at another prime plot of real estate on a busy intersection in the city of Cypress, but it was owned by a large development company who didn't want to sell.  When Cottonwood also declined to sell, the city had no choice but to reach for the eminent domain stick.

Libertarians might suggest that the city council did have a choice.  They could have chosen to respect the property rights of all of their citizens.  After all, they didn't vote 4-0 to seize the property of the large development company.  They didn't vote 4-0 to condemn their own churches.  They didn't vote 4-0 to seize their own homes and turn them into tax-spewing quick lube shops and McWendyKings.

Even upstanding citizens like Pete Kinnahan have a choice.  They can make the effort to learn the difference between convenience and rights before it's their turn to be the deadbeats that get kicked out.