Tuesday, June 29, 2010

The Lot Next Door...revisited

I'll sum up our story so far:  town owned garage on property, we wanted to buy small strip to preserve trees, town ignored us, sold land for a pittance, spent taxpayers money digging up a brand new road to put in new sewer connections for 4 duplexes.  Found contaminated soil (no surprise, they KNEW it was there) after they dug a pit, so no housing.  Pit sat for a year...finally the town filled it in and THEN accepted our offer to buy that tiny strip of land.  After of course, most of the trees were removed.
Now, there is street construction going on, for about a month now...with a couple streets north of us, and at least one south of us being worked on, and guess where headquarters is for all the old crap dug out of the street and the new crap going in?
So, instead of a view like this:
We have this one from our bedroom window:

The 500 feet I'm guessing means while it's out on the road and moving, since there's no way it's 500 feet from us.  In fact, it was only 4 feet from our property line:





 Those small trees, btw, were what we could afford to plant to 'replace' the large emerald cedars that were ripped down.  Some day, they will grow large, I'm not sure I hope I'm still in this house to see that though, the way things are going with that lot. 
Instead of being home to some nice birds and squirrels, maybe a thieving raccoon or two, we have this pile in the back corner, again, not too far from our property line:  (yes, there's an old hydrant in that pile!)
And some other views of the property, which apparently is for sale zoned commercial:
What's not shown is the now huge pile of dirt close by where that water truck 'was' parked (it was removed this morning, maybe just temporarily).  Even hearing the dump trucks approach, and KNOWING what's coming next does not stop me from jumping out of my skin at the cannon-loud sound of the back flap slamming shut after the dirt is dumped. 
The piece-de-resistance?  This lovely view from the road--
Yes, right to the curb!  Now, couldn't they have put it farther back?  I mean, the poor neighbours across the road have a somewhat uglier view than even we have.  And really, would YOU use it, knowing anyone driving by knows what you're about to do???  I probably shouldn't complain, they might move it back in the corner by that old fire hydrant and my dogs will bark every time some worker has to go-potty.

The kicker:  That nice view of trees above?  We could have had that, if the town hadn't waited till they discovered the land could not be used the way they wanted it to be used--and after the pit within 12" of our fence and property line, caving in, btw, they STILL charged us full price, along with ALL fees involved.  Yes, we were willing to pay this, but geez, I wonder if they would have gotten that much from the intended purchasers for the whole d***ed lot!

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