Not really humor, more pathetic

AND

When suburbia begins creeping into the rural areas the valuation of the land goes UP, even though it is still used to farm. Sometimes the valuation goes up so much that the farmer can't afford the property taxes from the little he makes farming. My father is down to 40 acres now (10 under water), most of that is not arable but his taxes go up every year. Don't get ME started on taxes.

Andy

my favorite was a couple of years ago when starting the boundary survey of a wooded tract that was about 15 acres for a subdivision in town. neighbor across a privacy fence (which was encroaching) asked, "what are y'all doing?" Answer, "surveying for a subdivision." neighbor asks "y'all aren't going to cut down our trees are you?"

you also get to walk over all the crap people have thrown over their privacy fence onto the wooded tract - flower pots, old pallets, tomato baskets, water hoses, decades of grass clippings and leaf raking, etc.

private property extends to all within my view.

I agree with Paden (as usual), if it's so important to you, buy it.

No problem like that in "Florida World"

We build first and ask questions later.......

From the Orlando Sentinel

“Rich McKay
Sentinel Staff Writer
July 19, 2009

More than a dozen class-action suits involving more than 500 homeowners in the area of the bombing range have been filed in state and federal courts in Orlando. The lawsuits target homebuilders, the biggest of which is Miami-based Lennar Homes, as well as mortgage companies such as K. Hovnanian American Mortgage, and the development company Terrabrook Vista Lakes LP.”

Y'all have a great week! B-)

> Even had one lady at a township planning meeting for a subdivision I was proposing who complained to the board that she walks her dog in that orchard every day and it should not be developed. I had to bite my tongue to keep from asking her if she knew she was trespassing every day.

Hopefully no one brought up potential prescriptive rights.....;-)

About 10 years ago I was setting some photo control for a project on the outskirts of Nashville. It was a tract of several hundred acres planned for development. Well, on one end of this tract there was a subdivision of about 30 lots that had been cut out probably about 15 years earlier. I was setting a point at the entrance to the subdivision when a young lady that lived there asked what I was doing. I told her. She then asked, "so they're going to put in a subdivision, that sucks." Obviously she thought that her neighborhood had been there since the beginning of time.

Something else closer to home. There was a vacant 50 acre tract in Paris that a developer wanted to put apartments on about 10 acres. The adjoiners were all low density residential and the current zoning for the 50 acres would not allow apartments. Well, the neighbors raised a big stink about these apartment being put in next door, and they didn't want the property to be rezoned. The developer told them that was fine, if he couldn't put apartments on 10 acres, he was going to put maximum density duplexes on all 50 acres, which would fit the current zoning. The neighbors all decided to keep quiet then.

> That almost exact situation occurred to me.
>
> Out client was subdividing a large area between two already developed areas. When we were doing the initial surround survey to define the outside boundaries of the development, we were accosted by one of the owners of a small house lot that backed onto the development.
>
> He was upset that he would not be able to walk his dog across the paddock anymore if it was subdivided. The idea that the paddock (our clients land) was private property had not even entered his tiny mind.

My friend on a planning board had the exact situation happen to him. He told the abutter, "You should consider yourself lucky that you could walk your dogs on Mr. Smith's land for all those years."

N.I.M.B.Y. is dead

B.A.N.A.N.A. is in: Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anybody

> Personal responsibility? Huh? Please explain the concept? :-S

Personal responsibility ? Whose? Explain the concept? What concept are you looking for?

Well, I can think of one instance where it simply involved pulling a portable shed back onto his own side of the property line before selling a tract, so that I didn't have to show it as a protrusion. He didn't want the protrusion shown and I wouldn't omit it without the shed being moved.

I hope it isn’t a PITA that once in a while a thread reminds me of some versifying I have done in the past. One of the great points made in this thread is that developers sometimes like to name things in a way that sort of denies the development. Thus:

Aka Fawn Meadow

SPAM-2004-042 Application name: Hamilton Ridge aka Fawn Meadow. Project location: intersection of Sands Road (Route 709) with Taylor Road (Route 726). Request approval of Site Plan Amendment (SPAM) for a temporary sales trailer on lot 9.
—Loudoun County land development applications accepted as of 5/29/04

At the county seat a map goes on display
to show the more than sixty lots these fields
have yielded to the husbandry of our day.
Until a wall of copper roofs unfolds

you might have time to catch a sunset’s flare
beyond the trees along the old railroad--
not that there ever was a train through here.
Before the Civil War, bright prospects showed

a way to Harpers Ferry and beyond,
where West Virginia waited in its hills.
Though it bankrupted them, men shaped the ground
into a modest stretch of cuts and fills

that became a dump for agricultural scrap.
Now one of the streets carved on the stubbly fallow
is named for the railroad spur: Manassas Gap.
Alfalfa Court convenes across the hollow

to summon up the farm’s last load of hay.
We find old words to call these new works by,
as if to name what goes could make it stay.
When mercury lamps wash out the Midnight Sky

and in Wooded Glen the bulldozed maples wilt,
settlers will ply the chemistry of the lawn
and high-priced rubber graze the fresh asphalt
beneath which lies the Meadow of the Fawn.

Rant off.

Henry

Henry

Growing up in Northern Virginia we used to joke that there were only three schools of subdivision naming:

1. Name it after the wildlife that was displaced - Deer Run
2. Give it a vaguely English upper crust name - Orange Hunt Estates (actual name of where I grew up)
3. The ultimate, combine both - Fox Hill Manor

Henry

> Growing up in Northern Virginia we used to joke that there were only three schools of subdivision naming:
>
> 1. Name it after the wildlife that was displaced - Deer Run
> 2. Give it a vaguely English upper crust name - Orange Hunt Estates (actual name of where I grew up)
> 3. The ultimate, combine both - Fox Hill Manor

That is universal.
We have all of that here as you mentioned but there is a tendency to add a lot of faux French names, i.e. Beau Chene, Belle Terre, Grande Terre, Parc Du Lac (which doesn't have a park or lake) also along with the English names.
You won't find any of the pecan trees in Pecan Grove s/d here which was a nice pecan grove in the past.

Henry

And there is, too, the proliferation of names with Pointe in them.

Cheers,

Henry

For an apt name, though, go looking for water in Hidden Pond Park, on the south side of Old Keene Mill between Huntsman and Rolling Roads.

There are many Flemings, though there are more Taylors. Still, I wonder whether you ever heard of Stephen Fleming, who wrote a novel called The Exile of Sergeant Nen. He was a year or so behind me in college.

Cheers,
Henry

Observed that scenario often

Where first in then do nor want neighboring area developed.

RADU