Posted on 06/11/2011 11:20:01 PM PDT by bronxville
One thing I noticed is how arrogant the councilmen were when talking to the little people!
These folks ain't Federal. They live in that town. They go to the grocery store, the dry cleaners, the movie theater, the car repair place. Show them no mercy. Shun them. Refuse their money, deny them service at your place of business.
Shun their kids. Shun their families.
To swipe a phrase from the liberals "think globally, act locally."
Iowa. Cedar Falls is up around Waterloo in the eastern part of the state.
I don’t believe in a requirement, but it does make sense for the fire department to have access. They either break in to check or have a key safe they can access. One does a bunch of damage, the other doesn’t.
I’ve been looking into having a Knox box installed at my elderly mother’s house so the fire department can get in if she has a medical emergency.
Make sure the SWAT Team has keys to the boxes, too...though they'll still bust in just for the thrill of it.
Also the mailman, so he can leave packages inside, if nobody is home.
There is no end to where this kind of stuff leads.
It should be optional. In the case of disabled/elderly people who may regularly need help ... it’s not a bad thing. It should, however, be an OPTION.
Government should NEVER require citizens to allow them access to their private property.
In Illinois, our Attorney General is talking about releasing the names of gun owners.
I simply don’t trust “the authorities” enough to think that no one malevolent might get access to the key to my keys.
The idea of making everyone do this is NUTS.
Then why don’t you leave a set of keys in your front door, just incase of an emergency.
I am in Illinois as well, and we have to give our door codes to both the FD and Police. In the city I am in, if we have a building alarm on our commercial property, we either have to a) give a set of keys (or codes) to both departments or b) be fined $500 for the 2nd false alarm that they respond to and $1,000 for each false alarm after that (the first false alarm is a freebie).
We get on average 4-6 false alarms per year.
We balked at the notion at first, but money talks. One could argue that maybe we shouldn’t have building alarms, well, without them, and our surveillance, our insurance premiums would probably double (and I think we already pay nearly 20k a year for a few million in comprehensive coverage, including property liability).
I can also understand why cities do this, first here, you don’t HAVE to give them access (we don’t actually give them keys, they have the codes to our doors), but our city was responding to an overabundance of false alarms (almost crippling our emergency services) until this penalty system went into effect.
On the other hand, I think it is a bit pricy, and perhaps 1/4 of that would be fine, the same as it is for our residents with burglar alarms (yes residents with loud screaming burglar alarms, the kind that wake up the square mile around you must also pay for false alarms).
If you think car alarms going off at night are bad, wait till you hear one of those home sirens that sounds like an air - raid going off 3-4 times a month at 2am, especially if its a foreclosed home or the owner is on vacation...(which is why I sort of welcome this law in our town, I know some folks just wouldn’t care how often their alarm went off if they weren’t fined for it).
Oh, and if it is like ours, clipping the wires breaks the circuit... the same as opening a door or window, making the siren go off, it does not disable the siren... before anyone gets a wise idea to go cut their neighbors outdoor air-raid home alarm wiring (it is set up that way so a prowler cannot disable your system with wire cutters).
So, anyways, back to the giving the city your codes, when they respond, they can’t just shut the alarm off, they wouldn’t be doing their job. I have watched the cops come in our building on surveillance, with the K9, and thoroughly search our buildings. A call is placed to my shop foreman by both the security company and the 911 dispatch, the cops stay until he arrives. If they can’t get him, they call me, and I come out.
It’s not a bad deal, and cheaper than hiring a full time security guy who will sleep on the job anyhow.
Before anyone knee-jerks, may I suggest there is more here than meets the eye (or knee)?
I live in a condo complex. We have gates — big hairy gates that are meant to protect us. If we have trouble — an assault, a large fight, a huge FIRE (all of which we have had in the last few years), I want the responders (police, fire, ambulance) to get in FAST! If they don’t have a master key to get in and it is the middle of the night and the problem is way away from the gate (and thus the person who needs the help might not be able to open the gate), HOW IN THE HECK CAN THEY HELP?
“The owner of the property should have keys to it. Even if you think you “own” your house free and clear, try not paying your property taxes for a while, and you’ll discover who the real owner is.”
As long as those who have the mortgages are making their payments and paying their taxes, they are the owners.
I can see the reason in some things you described, but I feel it’s wrong to require this of everyone.
I agree, it is wrong to mandate anything. Give the business owners a choice. We have a choice, fines or turn over our codes. I would not be happy if we did not have that choice.
I say let the lawsuits begin. And if they come to your door, then protect your property.
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
Is it true that vandals have gone around and broke off tooth picks in the locks, and they are disabled? What happens then, and who pays for the lock repair?
2) What happens when the police/FBI/EPA/some other officious governmental alimeball shows up to get the key to conduct a warrantless search of the premises? For the public good, of course.
“What happens when the police/FBI/EPA/some other officious governmental alimeball shows up to get the key to conduct a warrantless search of the premises?”
In the past, when we were asleep, no one would have thought a thing about it but today and long-range, it’s yet another right removed. As the blonde woman in the video stated...it’s a slippery slope, too many laws, each one restricting our our liberty. I agree, there’s no way I’m giving my house keys to any of these bozo’s, they can break down the door.
PS: The people sounded like tea partiers and I believe they won’t go down without a fight which we’ll know in a few days.
I do believe his point is that, if you have to continue to make payments to an entity, you are not the true owner - even if you no longer have a mortgage, if you have to pay taxes to maintain control of the property - it's not really yours.
And that was perhaps the whole idea of having property taxes. We’ll never fully own our home or land therefore can be seized by the government as they see fit...they also have their domain rules to cover them.
Well, since the Cedar Falls government just took ownership of the properties, they can make the tax payments too.
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