Staff Writer, DL Mullan
News / Environment
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Perpetual renters. That's what a city sees in all its property owners. So do you really own your property or are you a corporate city sharecropper?
Sound odd? Let me know what happens if you refuse to pay your property taxes... I bet you lose your home. In some places there's no law stipulating that the state, county, or city has the authority to levy a property tax. Who cares about laws when we have revenue making regulations and city ordinances?
Take for example Robin Speronis, Florida resident who went off the grid. City code enforcers did not care until she was interviewed about her project:
Speronis
disconnected all the utilities from her modest home in Cape Coral for an experiment in off-the-grid living some time ago. City officials ignored her activities until she went public and discussed them with Liza Fernandez, a reporter for a local TV station. A code enforcement officer designated Speronis’s home as uninhabitable and gave her an eviction notice a day after the piece aired.
The widow and former real estate agent now has two choices. She can either restore her hookup to the water system by the end of March or appeal Eskin’s ruling to the courts.
Code enforcers? Are they the modern day Corporate City Gestapo? Or just insane?
The codes are not current with modern uses of technology and living. So why is Speronis' home an issue if the city has to revamp their codes? Revenue.
Speronis either has to rehook up her home to the city, which of course there is a monthly fee even if you do not use the city's services. Or, she was be evicted because her home is not liveable.
Robin has a safe home. The problem is that she is not paying her tribute to the corporation and that has got to stop. What would America look like if people became self-sufficient?
The International Property Maintenance Code is used in communities throughout the United States and Canada. The code states that properties are unsafe to live in if they do not have electricity and running water. Speronis has
electricity and water. She gets running water by collecting rainwater and
electricity from solar panels.
The judge, Special Magistrate Harold S. Eskin, is caught in the middle of outdated codes and the use of green technologies, yet he continues to enforce revenue streams instead of making the city updates its regulations.
“Reasonableness and code requirements don’t always go hand-in-hand … given societal and technical changes (that) requires review of code ordinances,” Eskin was quoted as saying.
What would we do without code enforcers and the corporate power structure?
Perhaps this lesson should be heeded by communities throughout the country. Your city is enforcing international codes, not United States codes, not State codes, not local codes. Code enforcers can write you a ticket any time for living without them. Code enforcers can drag you into court, heavily fine you, take away your due process, and evict you.
All for having solar power and rain water. Maybe next week the code enforcers will fine her for a weed. The week after that the code enforcers will fine her for some other imaginary slight against the corporation. You know you are living on their property and the corporate city demands you live by their rules.
Americans put up with this garbage? Where is people's common sense?
