So, in a hypothetical situation, if one is in possession of a property and the municipal government wants to acquire it for public purpose, and they set a deadline for acquiring said properties, how does one respond?

How does it affect the situation if the municipality has a deadline to complete a project based on those acquisitions?

Don’t general rules of economics thus mean that the price of the properties the city covets just went up? Doesn’t the city’s need to put this project together in a tight timeline put Minot at the disadvantage in negotiations?

Thus is the case with a deadline to acquire properties for the proposed downtown gathering space.

As an alternative, what if owners of the city’s desired properties just have no interest in selling? In that case, if that has been made clear, why the waste of time negotiating? At a certain point either “no” means “no,” or else the city would pay much more than anticipated.

There wouldn’t be a lot of public support for seriously over-paying.

“We’ve made a little bit of progress. However, we still have a significant distance on at least one or more properties,” Mayor Shaun Sipma said this week. “We also have to come to the realization that our time frame is ticking away on this gathering space.”

That time frame would reasonably increase cost, and it risks the city having to effectively give HUD back the money designated to the project with an admission of failure.

It’s understandable that the Minot City Council would want to set a deadline so there is potentially time to develop the gathering place in a different location. But it comes at a cost and it comes with risk to the entire plan.

There’s little room for mistake here and either way it would have been a gamble.

Hopefully the city is prepared for the consequences — one way or another.