the image date should be at the bottom of the page
Posted on 08/02/2010 12:14:24 PM PDT by goldendays
Edited on 08/02/2010 12:18:13 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
Backyard Scofflaws Found on Earth -- Google Earth Google Earth is now being used to track down criminals, at least in one small town on Long Island. RIVERHEAD, N.Y.
A town on New York's Long Island is using Google Earth to find backyard pools that don't have the proper permits.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Knowing the suburban New York City region the way I do, I think this really has nothing to do with pools that have been installed without "proper permits" or anything like that. I believe the real motivation here is that this municipal government is using an inexpensive (but effective) to identify homes with pools in the backyards to increase the assessed value of the property for the purpose of computing property taxes.
The next step after "Everything that is not allowed is forbidden" is "Everything that is not forbidden is mandatory."
We're getting there soon enough.
Sounds like there’s a marked for camouflage nets here.
Oh, of course
Another big issue is the assessor increasing property value after green energy features are added. Lets say you do the math and find that solar water heating will pay for itself in 8 years, then the assessor tacks on value and subsequent taxes and you may never pay off your improvement.
LOL! More like the unapproved driveway.
I got used to that a long time ago.
LOL, I can’t believe I didn’t catch that....
My fingers were working faster than my brain. And I’m even on vacation today.
“cameras in the bedrooms”
or
“cameras in our homes”
:0)
Whatt do you know the history of zoning laws? Where did you pick up the information you are stating?
The first zoning ordinances had *nothing* to do with Progressives. They were attempts by property owners to keep property values high as trolleys and suburbanization began in the late 19th Century. Factories, forges and blacksmith shops, boarding houses and slaughterhouses were all among the first “scourges” of property values that homeowners saw driving down the values of their homes.
If anything, they were intened as a way to keep out “undesirables” - especially the urban poor and non-whites, who wanted to escape tebements but couldn’t afford to buy single-family homes. By keeping out boarding houses,
multiple-family residences, apartment houses, and places of employment for the non-skilled, homeowners had a better chance of making sure the right sort of people were their neighbors. It was still legal to put codicils in deeds that restricted ownership of the property as to use and as to racial and religious ownership of the property. This was exactly the *opposite* of what Progressives wanted.
We live in a home that was in the first “suburban” development in the area to permit Jewish ownership - although the first deed to the property forbade its purchase by a “member of the Negro or Chinese race.” Of course, codicils like that are illegal now.
Zoning laws changed as the suburbs changed. The auto suburbs spread following the passage of the Interstate Highway Act, and folks left the cities. But these were the very people that zoning laws were originally intended to keep out.
The first thing *those* folks wanted to do was get rid of agriculture in the suburbs - too smelly and noisy. It’s why my town won’t let me keep chickens in the old chicken coop on my property. Now THAT’S tyrannical!
Property taxes should not be levied on homestead property. As an artifact of feudalism, they are fundamentally inconsistent with American opposition to feudal taxation.
The justification for property taxes was supposedly to encourage productivity of the land - not tax people out of their homes because the government employees think they deserve a bite of the pie too.
They don't.
They have gone from bad to worse in the past twenty years. A new-ish trend in Cali is to make everything the subject of a “conditional use permit”. Which is a way of the city saying “we’ll make the rules up after you apply, and figure out how much we can shake you down for”. Ironically, most people are OK with this, as cities have tended to tread lightly on voter-rich single-family properties, and save the real love for commercial and multi-unit residential developers.
It’s a cesspool of corruption, and, as you point out, one area in which the word “tryanny” can be used withouy hyperbole.
They have gone from bad to worse in the past twenty years. A new-ish trend in Cali is to make everything the subject of a “conditional use permit”. Which is a way of the city saying “we’ll make the rules up after you apply, and figure out how much we can shake you down for”. Ironically, most people are OK with this, as cities have tended to tread lightly on voter-rich single-family properties, and save the real love for commercial and multi-unit residential developers.
It’s a cesspool of corruption, and, as you point out, one area in which the word “tryanny” can be used withouy hyperbole.
But that would require listening to Alex Jones & Walter Burien.
We removed our above ground pool a few years ago - Google Earth still shows it.
the image date should be at the bottom of the page
The image from Google Earth of my place is over 6 years old, as the house next door isn’t shown yet, and my 3 year old white roof is seen as the mossy black it once was.
mine is from 2007...
I’ve heard that in some areas of the country pools decrease the value of your house, because of maintenance, etc.
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