July 12, 2007
By: Sid Riley
This column presents a non-partisan, conservative viewpoint about items of interest in our community and our lives. Focus is on items that are impacting your pocket book, your personal freedoms, and your rights. I hope that you will read the column regularly and that it occasionally influences your opinions and actions. Now, on to the subject of the week:
"At This Week’s County Commission Meeting You Lost Some More Property Rights"
The county "code-a-crats" went before the County Commissioners at their Tuesday morning meeting and talked them into making the existing codes even broader in scope. The commissioners approved the request made by Chief Building Inspectorcrat, Larry Carnley by a vote of 4 to 1, with Commissioner Jeremy Branch being the only board member that voted to let you keep the property rights that were in question.
Until now you could do small additions and alterations to your house without being required to first go to the code-a-crat permitting office, present your plans for approval, pay for a permit, then after you do the work have a code-a-crat come and inspect the way you did it to be sure you did it in the exact manner that some other code-a-crat in Tallahassee had specified. No more!
From now on, ALL construction or alterations must be included in this miserable process.
The code-a-crats argued that because of this loophole much shoddy work was being done, and that they could not take any action to protect the home owner. Well in my opinion the entire process is an intrusion into an area that the bureaucracy has no business in. These matters should be negotiated, planned, and completed through the relationship of the property owner and the people he is hiring to do the work.
If the work is not done right, the property owner can not pay, or can sue in the courts. He does not need the building inspector to be there to "protect" him! Ultimately, poor workmanship will put the worker out of business, since much of this type of work is placed from referrals from satisfied customers. We should let the marketplace solve these problems without the costly help of the bureaucracy.
Jackson County already has a reputation throughout north Florida for being a county that has an anti-business, anti-citizen dogmatic group of code masters that make life miserable for anyone trying to do any construction in the area. I talked to a pool contractor from Panama City recently. He said that his company discontinued building and installing swimming pools in Jackson County several years ago. It was much easier to get the work done with a minimum of interference and resulting cost in Bay County.
Most of the construction codes they use were written by the trade unions, insurance companies, and by engineers from the companies that sell the construction items that are put into the projects. Thus they often over-specify things to a point well beyond what is really needed. As a result more work is created for tradesmen, more expensive products are sold, and more security is created for the insurance company…….all at the expense of the property owner. Additionally, (and of equal importance) a lot of jobs are created for egotistic, semi-qualified bureaucrats. Then your taxes go up to support all of this.
So now you can virtually do nothing to your home or business without calling "Big Brother Code-A-Crat" to come and tell you how to do it. I’m not even sure if you can still change a toilet seat without their help. When election time comes, I will remember which commissioners voted to reduce my property rights….I hope you do the same. If so, you will be "Getting It Right".
RUDAMENTS: ODDS AND ENDS WORTH MENTIONING:
- A friend and golfing buddy passed away last week. Craig Daniels died in his car while on the way to see a doctor in Dothan. I will miss his friendly smile and competition on the golf course.
- The Commissioners are still moving ahead with planning their new "County Administration Building" to be built over by the old jail structure. They bought a small adjoining parcel this week to provide more parking spaces when it is built. Hold on to your purse when they bring this project out into the public.
- Budget workshops are about to begin for next year’s budget and millage setting. I wonder how much our cost of government will grow this year. You can bet that the budget will be more than last year, which was more than the previous year, which was more than the previous year, which was more than the previous year, and on and on and on.
- I saw a letter to the editor complaining about how slow work was progressing on Water Street (Kelson Avenue). I think the bridge crew from the Mill Pond project is doing the work.
- Sneads was able to get all required permits from FDEP and the county for putting Bay County’s waste "sludge" on some land near town. They got all the permitting done quickly, with no problems or interference. I can guarantee you that if it had been an individual or some poor company that wanted to dump this sludge…..they would still be wading through bureaucratic crap.
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