Part of being a homeowner often includes taking care of the small bit of land between the sidewalk and the street.
If you choose to plant a tree there, however, the city might come along and cut it down if you don’t get their permission.
That is what happened to this homeowner, but he managed to get at least a little bit of satisfaction in the end.
Let’s take a look.
Whose Easement Is It Anyway?
A guy plants a nice tree to improve his property, provide shade.
Municipality comes along, cuts it down a few years later.
It might belong to them, but the homeowner was taking care of it.
Why? Well, it was planted in the space between the sidewalk and the the street, and the easement belongs to the city!
The homeowner is chuffed, to say the least.
So he hatches a plan.
Not a plan that will solve anything, or bring back his beloved birch, of course, but a plan which will stick a thumb in the eye of his tormentors.
The city won’t stand for that.
He stops mowing the section between the sidewalk and the street.
After all, it isn’t his land, right?
Of course, they have an ordinance about mowing.
Soon enough the grass is long enough to draw the ire and fines of the city.
If you can’t get your way, at least waste their time.
He takes it to the mattresses with them; objecting at the next board meeting, demanding all of his entitled due process to dismiss the fines.
Ultimately it goes before a judge, who does dismiss the fines based on the wording of the ordinance not covering the homeowner responsibility clearly enough.
The city changes the law after that, but he certainly got his satisfaction from tying them up in knots for almost a year!
Sometimes it is worth it to fight the government, even if you don’t ‘win’.
Let’s look at some of the comments on this story.
But hey, the homeowner had fun too.
The law doesn’t have to make sense.
Groan.
This guy knows the law.
It might not have accomplished anything, but I’m sure it was satisfying.
Sometimes that’s all we get.
If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.
