Stupid City

cargodz · Post by **cargodz** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 1:15 pm

Ok.. here's the story:
I bought this house from a buddy of mine a few years ago for one dollar ($1.00). It was only a frame and only had siding... not even windows, but the electrical and plumbing was still all hooked up. So I get it from him thinking I can put the work into it myself and have a nice lil turnover.
2 days later the city comes out and disconnects the electric pole and water and sewer lines not knowing that I just bought it. I call them up and they apologize, but say there is nothing they or I can do about it... and then they tell me that if I want to have it hooked back up I have to pay an electrician and a plumber to come in and do ALL of the work on updating the house and then pay them to hook it back up. Well that works out to be over $15,000 dollars just for that, not to mention all the hook ups... about another $4-5 Thousand and all the other improvements the place needs.
I call the city back up and tell them I want to donate the property to the city... guess what? They don't want it. I try to donate it to other non profit organizations like Habitate for Humanity... guess what? They don't want it either.
So I call back to the city and ask what I'm supposed to do. They say "Don't pay the taxes and it will go up for sherriff sale. Ok so I don't pay the taxes and after a while I get a letter from the city... a complaint about a abandoned house (mine). Another call to the city and they say that if I don't do something about it... it will be put on the schedule for demo... so I tell them. DEMO the damn thing... and about 3 months later they do.... so now I have a vacant lot... that nobody is still interested in and the next spring I get another letter from the city telling me to clean up the property and mow the grass or they will do it. Now I call the city again and the lady tells me to either clean it up or it will be put on my taxes... I tell her I went to clean it up and they already did it... she says you will be billed for it then on your taxes... and I tell her that I'm not paying the taxes, cause that's what they told me to do if I want it taken away.... she says O.k.
Now today I get this letter in the mail... a summons... The city is taking me to court for $400 plus dollars for the clean up... and now all I can do is wait for the attorney to call back....... this sucks, and right before Christmas

Sorry but I needed to vent somewhere... so to all that made it through all that.... Thanks

Thu Dec 07, 2006 1:33 pm

That bites, do you have anything in writing from the city about the things they said to you?

cargodz · Post by **cargodz** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 1:34 pm

Chris from Washington wrote:That bites, do you have anything in writing from the city about the things they said to you?

Nope... just talked to them on the phone

William from NOLA · Post by **William from NOLA** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 1:47 pm

Dang, that really sucks. What about just putting it up for sale or something?

geolemon · Post by **geolemon** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 1:55 pm

That's always a painful lesson - always get a confirmation in writing.

Just yesterday, I had a project that I've been working on go down in flames:
We are building a first article prototype engine harness for a small aircraft - we've never built it before. We discover that the two engine manifold temperature sensors that they provided to us have preterminated wiring attached that is a full 6" shorter than the part drawings show that they should be. Our client's contact agent tells me "we've never had this problem before - doublecheck your measurements"

After spending a whole afternoon reworking and tweaking my fixtures, taking out any extra length allowed by drawing tolerances, I have confirmed that these certainly won't work.

So, the next morning, I contact the client again, and this time I am told that if I need to, we can extend the wires to reach, particularly since this is a first-article, and quite often first-article production like this isn't used in production (ie. not actually installed into an aircraft), but rather is dissected to ensure we have built it properly, before we begin producing them. No worries - it makes sense.

We move forward, and spend the rest of the day routing wiring, running it through looming, terminating it into military-spec connectors, installing adhesive-lined heat shrink - a lot of work.

I followed up with an Email to the client, asking the agent to confirm what he had authorized us to do over the phone.

The reply?

"We actually prefer if you do not splice these wires."

We spent most of today undoing much of the work that we had done yesterday, and are now awaiting replacement sensors.

Two days of work by our team, and promises to management in both organizations, could have been avoided if I had simply requested that he send me an Email confirmation when I had him on the phone to begin with.

Definitely one of those painful lessons.

cargodz · Post by **cargodz** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 2:03 pm

William from NOLA wrote:Dang, that really sucks. What about just putting it up for sale or something?

No luck there either... I tryed to sell it to both the neighbors on either side and they have no interest (and it's a double corner lot too)... doesn't stop the neighbor on the one side from using it as a drive thru though from the alley to his driveway... I put up 3 for sale signs and all came up missing... My bet is that it's the neighbor that doesn't want to lose his free drive thru.

geolemon · Post by **geolemon** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 2:14 pm

cargodz wrote:No luck there either... I tryed to sell it to both the neighbors on either side and they have no interest (and it's a double corner lot too)... doesn't stop the neighbor on the one side from using it as a drive thru though from the alley to his driveway... I put up 3 for sale signs and all came up missing... My bet is that it's the neighbor that doesn't want to lose his free drive thru.

So fence it in and solve both problems. Big "hate fence" all around. No driving through that, and no one can see the field contained inside.

Or, sell flyers and hold concerts in the yard. You'll make a killing on beer and pop, and drive the neighbors crazy.

William from NOLA · Post by **William from NOLA** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 2:16 pm

geolemon wrote:pop

Yankee alert!!!

:)

cargodz · Post by **cargodz** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 2:21 pm

geolemon wrote:So fence it in and solve both problems. Big "hate fence" all around. No driving through that, and no one can see the field contained inside.
Or, sell flyers and hold concerts in the yard. You'll make a killing on beer and pop, and drive the neighbors crazy.

Fence won't work... it had one that mysteriously got torn down and trashed... call the cops, and what do they do... ask the neighbors if they saw anything or anybody....... and what do you suppose the answer was?
You got it... they didn't see anything, and the cop says sorry nothing more we can do for you, but we got it on record.

And although I do like the idea of the concert to piss off the locals... You gotta get permits for somethin like that and with this being inner city Toledo... that would never fly.

smoker · Post by **smoker** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 2:30 pm

that sucks dude....the town i grew up in decided to build a road so all the buckeyes moving across the river could get home a little quicker and my moms house was in the way so they bought it, evicted her and it sat vacant until they could knock it down, in the meantime people got in and stole stuff like cabinets, the furnace and the garage door..........instead of knocking it down and being done with it, they cleaned it up, fixed the glass and put in a new garage door and sent my mom a bill for a house they owned