Comments by "SmallSpoonBrigade" (@SmallSpoonBrigade) on "City Reverses Itself on Shutting Down Man's Business" video.

That's likely easier said than done. When businesses move there's a very real risk of losing out on enough business to put them under. Not to mention that they'd need to find an appropriately sized lot and deal with the hassle of getting all the equipment moved over and installed. Some of the lifts may not even be economical to move rather than replace, leading to a significant expense.
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@CAFFIENEHOUND It happens a lot. Around here they started building walls along the freeway to reduce noise. I'm not inherently against it, but the people who were benefitting were mostly people who just bought into the area after the freeway had been constructed as this was nearly 40 years later. So, they got to benefit from cheap housing and the taxpayers got to pay for the walls.
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As somebody that's studying accounting, that is not at all what amortization means or what it's for. Not that it's Steve's fault, he's referencing the rationale that the city is likely using. Amortization is something that's done to account for reduction in the value of certain classes of assets. The only reason why it's done is so that you don't have these periodic significant loses when that reduction in value does get realized until then it's only marginally more real than paper losses on stocks that haven't yet been sold. (For land, it's depletion and for machinery it's depreciation) It can't be used as compensation in any reasonable way as the only actual benefit you get in terms of money is in write offs on your taxes and even then, that's money that a business would already be including in their financial calculations. I'm not surprised that the city had to back down as they provided precisely 0 compensation for the business.
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