Mitch Goldstein | Coach Mitch | January 14th, 2008Lake Elsinore grapples with fading landscapes
By: Aaron Claverie
Murrieta also may regulate maintenance of dying yards of foreclosed homes
LAKE ELSINORE – The scope of the city’s weed abatement ordinance could be expanded to address the dying lawns and shabby landscaping left behind by the former owners of foreclosed homes, Lake Elsinore Mayor Daryl Hickman said.
The issue is pressing, Hickman said recently, because the housing crunch that has left neighborhoods blighted with brown lawns and foreclosure signs show no sign of abating soon.
“I’m not going to let our neighborhoods go to hell,” he said.
Murrieta also is looking at the problem of neglected yards, which can affect the values of neighboring homes. Mayor Rick Gibbs said the city is working on an ordinance that would require the owners of foreclosed properties, usually banks, to contract with property management companies that would maintain the landscaping.
In Lake Elsinore, the city’s weed abatement ordinance enables it to place a tax lien on a property if the landscaping falls into disarray.
Besides the visual blight, lower property values affect the city’s property tax receipts.
“It’s affecting our cash flow,” he said.
A non-foreclosed home’s value could fall by as much as 10 percent if it is sitting next to a foreclosed house, said Doug Leeper, Chula Vista’s code enforcement manager.
Because a city’s property tax receipts rise and fall based on the assessed values of homes, any decline in values would be matched by a corresponding decline in tax receipts.
See entire story: http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/01/05/news/californian/5_02_991_4_08.txt
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Coach Mitch’s REFLECTIONS
Interesting, very interesting
Property owners better watch out. Soon, the Lawn Police could be placing tax liens against your property. You could put your property in jeopardy because you didn’t mow your lawn.
Property rights are diminishing
All over the country, government counsels are restricting property rights. From New York, through the Midwest, into the South and in California, our rights to our property are being reduced, negated and stymied.
Consumer protection
At all levels of government, office holders are voting to make landlords and property owners subject to onerous standards of consumer protection. Under the guise of protecting the public, US citizens are seeing the main protections of our constitution being abrogated.
Life, Liberty, Property
The raison d’etre for the US government to exist is to defend a citizen’s life, liberty and property from those who would take or deprive it from that citizen. This would include the government itself. That is why the US government is allowed to “take” a property only after due process has taken place and a fair price has been paid for the property taken.
Government as thief
The main principle is that – it is easier to take someone else’s asset than it is work for it yourself. Thievery pays.
Our founders knew that the history of man is plagued by dictatorships, oligarchs and authoritarianism. Fredric Bastiat, in his 1858 pamphlet, “The Law,” calls taxes “legalized theft” and shows that it is government who is the greatest thief in history.
Neither Al Capone nor the drug czars come close to the amount of monies that our government has taken from us – without good, constitutional cause.
Monopolies, cartels and unions
A monopoly can only exist with government sanction. A company may be big but it cannot be a monopoly unless the government makes laws that help that business have significant advantages over other companies in that business. Monopoly is pursued so that the company does not have to work as hard to make a profit. This is a form of thievery.
The only way government leaders will vote for a company to have such enormous advantage is if they are bribed. This is another form of thievery.
Cartels are created when companies band together to control a product or a market. They do so because they do not want to compete with each other. The public pays higher prices because the prices are fixed. This is still another form of thievery.
Unions also are based on the idea that a group can make rules which benefit themselves at the expense of the public. Tradesmen lobby for licenses to be necessary to work. This lowers the number of workers who can do a job, like plumbing, and it raises the price to the consumer. This form of thievery is little understood and seldom spoken of.
The Nanny State
If a citizen wants something that they cannot purchase or create on their own, an alternate means of achievement is to lobby government to do it for them. And, because they benefit, those in government today feel that they must provide an answer to every citizen’s grievance or dilemma.
Protection of assets
In this case, some citizens are wary that their asset, their home, will be lowered in value because of a few unkempt lawns, which they label as neighborhood blight. By getting government to make laws to force penalties on wayward property owners, these citizens are gaining at another citizen’s expense.
The law is questionable to me because the constitutional mandate is to protect the ownership rights of the property owner. To my mind, that means that the only time a citizen gets to say something is if they own that land. Therefore, if a neighbor wants a lovely, green lawn, let them buy the property. That is the common law concept.
And another thing…
Southern California is in the middle of a drought. There is no reason for any home in that area to have a green lawn right now, especially in inland desert areas. Water has already been taken away from farmers who supply all of our domestic winter food crops. Why does government require us to water lawns instead of food? Madness!
Don’t be fearful of investing in real estate
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Happy hunting,
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