I am writing to you in the hope of appealing to the members of the Hays City Commission. It has to do with the issue of using eminent domain to take the farmer's land to save them a small amount of money.

My appeal is simple -- to live one of the basics of law, the 10th Commandment "Do not covet thy neighbor's goods." Of course, the reciprocal call of justice, charity and fairness falls on the landowners. $120,000 is not a small amount of money, especially to the number of farmers who share this amount to offset loses and make a reasonable profit from their land. It is a small amount compared to the $3.6 million the city collects annually for the sale of that water.

A number of years ago, because of flukes in the law, the city received the water rights directly from under the noses of the landowners. These water rights that the city got for free are worth, literally, millions of dollars. Count your blessings! Don't focus on the small amount of leases you pay the farmers to harvest your water, but rather thank God for the millions of dollars worth of water rights you got for free.

Yes, at one time the farmers were bitter over their loss and the city's gain of water rights. But thank goodness for the sense of fairness and justice by the city commissioners some 16 years ago. There has been peace because of the fairness of the leases. Now these people face turmoil again because you are using eminent domain to destroy these leases and take the little they have. Also, if this fairness would be extended to the new locations, the city could have their new wells up and running in short order.

In today's world, power and connivance are acceptable means of gain, but I remind you that God calls us to more, in fact he promises more if we practice his ways of fairness and justice. I hope that your life of morality extends past the Sunday service to the other six days of the week. Please look if what you covet in your neighbors is really fair? Do the farmers (and future generations of farmers) really need this land to offset the damages to the rest of their land? Am I giving scandal by professing a faith yet yielding governmental power unfairly based on the knowledge and standards of the world? I would like to extend to you this exhortation taken from Isaiah 45:20: "Come and assemble, gather together, you fugitives from among the Gentiles! They are without knowledge who bear wooden idols and pray to gods that cannot save."

Michel Werth

229 240th. Ave.