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Thread: City Fines Elderly Man $30,000 Over Uncut Grass, Tries to Steal His Home

  1. #1

    City Fines Elderly Man $30,000 Over Uncut Grass, Tries to Steal His Home

    Florida town attracted national attention last week for its efforts to fine a 69-year-old retiree nearly $30,000 and then foreclose on his home because he was unable to pay—all because he failed to cut his grass.

    The Tampa Bay Times reports that the city of Dunedin claims its Code Enforcement Board, which is run by citizens but backed by government authority, fined homeowner Jim Ficken $500 per day over code violations—an increased fine because he is a “repeat” offender.

    Ficken's Follies

    In 2015, he committed his first “offense” when he left town to take care of his dying mother in South Carolina and left his grass unattended. He committed his second violation last summer when he had to manage her estate and settle affairs after her passing. This time, his grass was left uncut because the man who cut it died while Ficken was away. Then, the report says, Ficken’s lawnmower broke, and he let the grass on his front lawn continue to grow. The board claims they received complaints about the height of his grass, which grew past the 10-inch limit last summer, though his attorneys say they have seen no evidence of complaints.

    Ficken says he had no idea he was racking up the fines until he returned home from South Carolina last August. A city inspector walked past his house and notified him he’d soon be receiving a “big bill from the city,” at which point he purchased a lawnmower and cut his grass.

    “A city should not be able to take somebody’ house for having tall grass.”

    Two days later, the city inspector confirmed that Ficken’s lawn was in compliance, but he was still not informed that, at that point, he owed the city $23,500. The following month, the city fined him for an additional 10 days while he was in South Carolina. Also in September, the city officially declared the grass to be an appropriate height. By that time, his bill was up to $29,833.50—and the fines were accruing interest.

    Last week the city moved to foreclose Ficken’s home over his inability to pay the exorbitant fees, and in return, he filed a lawsuit. The Times reports he is “seeking $1 in nominal damages, attorneys fees and injunctions that would relieve him of the fines.” He is being represented pro bono by the Institute for Justice (IJ), a legal advocacy organization. They are citing the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause, arguing that “a city should not be able to take somebody’ house for having tall grass.”

    ...
    https://fee.org/articles/city-fines-...teal-his-home/
    Quote Originally Posted by Ron Paul View Post
    The intellectual battle for liberty can appear to be a lonely one at times. However, the numbers are not as important as the principles that we hold. Leonard Read always taught that "it's not a numbers game, but an ideological game." That's why it's important to continue to provide a principled philosophy as to what the role of government ought to be, despite the numbers that stare us in the face.
    Quote Originally Posted by Origanalist View Post
    This intellectually stimulating conversation is the reason I keep coming here.



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  3. #2

  4. #3
    Guy should look up city owned properties and take pictures of overgrown properties owned by the city.

  5. #4
    This is the exact local tyranny the Constitution of the United States of America was designed to protect each individual everywhere from.

  6. #5
    Traitors
    Murderers
    Theives

    Our masters
    FLIP THOSE FLAGS, THE NATION IS IN DISTRESS!


    why I should worship the state (who apparently is the only party that can possess guns without question).
    The state's only purpose is to kill and control. Why do you worship it? - Sola_Fide

    Baptiste said.
    At which point will Americans realize that creating an unaccountable institution that is able to pass its liability on to tax-payers is immoral and attracts sociopaths?

  7. #6
    And where were his neighbors? Case in point: I had knee replacement surgery 12 days ago. We have not asked for help from anyone. But yesterday our neighbor came over to cut our front lawn. We didn’t ask for help. Neighbor was just cutting his own grass and came over and did our front. We and another neighbor help with the neighbor on the other side’s lawn because she is an older single woman and does not get a lot of that kind of help from family and friends.

    That’s what neighbors do.
    Last edited by euphemia; 05-18-2019 at 08:44 PM.
    #NashvilleStrong

    “I’m a doctor. That’s a baby.”~~~Dr. Manny Sethi

  8. #7
    And the ones of you who believe in taking care of yourselves and nobody else can just take a flying leap. You have a responsibility to help others when they need it, even if they don’t ask.
    #NashvilleStrong

    “I’m a doctor. That’s a baby.”~~~Dr. Manny Sethi

  9. #8
    Clearly a violation of the Eighth Amendment . If I was Gov I would order ea of these people jailed without bail until they could be deported .
    Do something Danke



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  11. #9
    A Florida woman was fined $100,000 for a dirty pool and overgrown grass. When do fines become excessive?

    DUNEDIN, Fla. – Kristi Allen read the letter and thought it had to be a scam.

    It said she owed $92,600 in fines for overgrown vegetation and a stagnant swimming pool at a house she no longer owned. She must pay in two weeks, the letter said, and it hinted that she could be sued if she didn't. Including interest charges and other fees, her debt swelled to $103,559, about twice her yearly income.

    Three months later, in late 2018, the city of Dunedin sued to collect, setting off another legal fight over how local governments use their power to impose heavy fines on citizens. What Allen, 38, a mother of two, thought had to be a scam turned into a nightmare she said could bankrupt her family.

    In early 2014, three years after Kristi Allen moved out, a code inspector came to the house, which had been vacant. Brown palm tree leaves littered the overgrown backyard. A neighbor told the inspector that something dead may have been rotting there. The swimming pool had turned into a bright green, mosquito-infested cesspool.

    Dunedin, a small seaside city outside Tampa, cracks down on code violations, saddling homeowners with massive fines while its revenue grows. In 5½ years, the city has collected nearly $3.6 million in fines – sometimes tens of thousands at a time – for violating laws that prohibit grasses taller than 10 inches, recreational vehicles parked on streets at certain hours or sidings and bricks that don't match.

    ...

    Dunedin officials declined to be interviewed but insisted through a spokesman that the fines they impose are neither excessive nor abusive. Dunedin’s code enforcement policies are meant to “protect the integrity of neighborhoods and the quality of the community,” spokesman Ron Sachs said.

    City and county records show that at least 33 homeowners owed the city $20,000 or more in fines as of May. That tally does not include dozens of bank- and company-owned houses with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of code violations.

    In some cases, the fines seem to have more to do with aesthetics than public safety.

    The city fined a man nearly $30,000 because of a “chronic” overgrown yard.

    It fined a couple $31,000 for fixing their roof without a permit after a tree fell on it during a hurricane.

    “They’re using a shotgun to kill a mouse,” said Bill Prescott, who was fined $43,000 because of an inoperative car and a pile of dried leaves in his front yard and plants that grew over the street. Prescott, who lives with his wife in Tallahassee, said he became ill last year and couldn’t make the long drive to Dunedin to maintain his second home. Fines of $250 a day piled up without his knowledge, Prescott said.

    ...

    Allen moved to Dunedin in 2005 to be with her boyfriend, Keith, who later became her husband. She bought a bungalow-style house on the same street where he was raised. It had a swimming pool and a backyard next to a popular hiking trail, so for someone who loves swimming and the outdoors, it seemed perfect. They planted palm trees in the yard and restored the pool that had sat empty for years.

    Then the financial crisis hit. Allen, a radiologic technologist, took a pay cut and lost her house in the wave of foreclosures that washed over Florida. She signed an agreement with U.S. Bank National Association allowing the foreclosure and moved out. She thought Dunedin was behind her.

    In early 2014, three years after Allen moved out, a code inspector came to the house, which had been vacant. Brown palm fronds littered the overgrown backyard. A neighbor told the inspector that something dead may have been rotting there. The swimming pool had turned into a bright green, mosquito-infested cesspool.

    City officials sent notices of the problems to Allen, who was still listed as the homeowner in county property records. Then they started fining her $100 a day. The letters mailed to Allen were returned undeliverable with no forwarding address. The city kept fining her anyway.

    Allen said none of this should have been her problem. As far as she knew, she relinquished ownership of the house when she agreed to the foreclosure in 2011. Her name stayed in property records because the foreclosure was not finalized until late 2014. By then, the city had been fining Allen for several months. (U.S. Bank National Association said it did not have control of Allen's loan and referred questions about the case to the company that serviced Allen's mortgage, which did not immediately respond.)

    The daily fines continued for the next two years until a code inspector visited the house again and saw it had been cleaned and renovated. For much of the time the fines were accumulating in 2015 and 2016, Allen no longer owned the house.

    Seeking to collect, Dunedin’s city attorney mailed the demand letter to Allen – this time to her current address. She looked up the attorney’s name online and realized the letter was real.

    “It defies common sense that someone could all of a sudden owe $100k where they had no idea there was even an issue,” her attorney, Ben Hillard, said.

    Allen isn’t the only homeowner to accuse Dunedin of overzealous code enforcement practices and say they were blindsided by a huge fine that accumulated for years. Others, such as Guillaume Picot, said they were fined daily even as they tried to fix the violations.

    After a tree smashed a corner of the roof of Picot’s rental property during Hurricane Irma two years ago, he bought $300 worth of wood and other supplies at Home Depot and fixed the damage himself. The city fined him $200 a day for fixing the roof without a permit. The fines racked up while Picot scrambled to find a locally licensed roofer who would sign off on his repairs. He and his wife owe about $31,000.

    Many of the debts have swelled so much that the city can’t collect them at all. Even when Dunedin settles for a smaller amount, it is less forgiving than other cities, said Chad Orsatti, an attorney from nearby Palm Harbor who said he has settled several Dunedin code enforcement cases on behalf of homeowners.

    “It’s almost Gestapo-like,” Orsatti said. “You can have a screw in the wrong spot. It’s an easy fix, but until you get that contractor to come back out there and sign off on it, those fines are running every day.”

    Sachs, the city spokesman, declined to comment about Allen’s case and those of other homeowners. He said fewer than 2% of the city’s code enforcement disputes end up with cumulative fines, and those that do involve homeowners “who have chosen to stay in violation” and have shown “disdain, disregard and disrespect for the rule of law and their neighborhoods.”

    Sachs said code enforcement is not about generating revenue for the city.

    ...

    Fines in some cases have become so big that they make it impossible for people to pay, let alone fix the violations that got them in trouble, said Robert Eckard, a Tampa lawyer representing another Dunedin homeowner.

    “It’s like setting someone up for failure,” Eckard said. “It’s deprivation and punishment for people who don’t have the income to remedy the problem.”

    Last year, the chief justice of Ohio’s Supreme Court condemned governments’ reliance on fines to make money.

    “Courts are centers of justice, not automatic teller machines whose purpose is to generate revenue for governments,” Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor wrote in a letter to her fellow judges urging them not to succumb to pressure to generate revenue through the court system.

    In February, the U.S. Supreme Court took a step to upend cities and states’ ability to decide for themselves when fines are appropriate.

    That case started when prosecutors in Indiana went to court to demand that a man convicted of a minor drug charge forfeit his $42,000 Land Rover. The car was worth four times as much as the maximum possible fine for the crime, but the government’s attorneys argued that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on excessive fines did not apply to cities and states.

    ...

    The city argued that Allen should pay, even as it acknowledged that her mortgage lender had taken control of the house. Dunedin’s attorneys cited a state statute saying the lien the city placed on the house where the violation occurred applies to other personal property Allen owned.

    Hillard, Allen’s attorney, said forcing her to pay violated her right to due process because she didn't know the violations even existed. Liens, Hillard argued, are tied to properties, not to a person.

    ...
    https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/ne...es/1691703001/
    Quote Originally Posted by Ron Paul View Post
    The intellectual battle for liberty can appear to be a lonely one at times. However, the numbers are not as important as the principles that we hold. Leonard Read always taught that "it's not a numbers game, but an ideological game." That's why it's important to continue to provide a principled philosophy as to what the role of government ought to be, despite the numbers that stare us in the face.
    Quote Originally Posted by Origanalist View Post
    This intellectually stimulating conversation is the reason I keep coming here.

  12. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by ATruepatriot View Post
    This is the exact local tyranny the Constitution of the United States of America was designed to protect each individual everywhere from.
    And yet....here we are.

    A lynch mob with a barrel of hot tar and some feathers would make for a better deterrent.
    "The Patriarch"

  13. #11
    Or better neighbors. A good neighbor recognizes the responsibility to defend the liberty of others as much as the liberty of himself. Cutting a neighbor’s lawn while he is off grieving a parent is the neighborly and liberty loving thing to do.
    #NashvilleStrong

    “I’m a doctor. That’s a baby.”~~~Dr. Manny Sethi

  14. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Suzanimal View Post
    Allen isn’t the only homeowner to accuse Dunedin of overzealous code enforcement practices and say they were blindsided by a huge fine that accumulated for years. Others, such as Guillaume Picot, said they were fined daily even as they tried to fix the violations.

    After a tree smashed a corner of the roof of Picot’s rental property during Hurricane Irma two years ago, he bought $300 worth of wood and other supplies at Home Depot and fixed the damage himself. The city fined him $200 a day for fixing the roof without a permit. The fines racked up while Picot scrambled to find a locally licensed roofer who would sign off on his repairs. He and his wife owe about $31,000.

    Many of the debts have swelled so much that the city can’t collect them at all. Even when Dunedin settles for a smaller amount, it is less forgiving than other cities, said Chad Orsatti, an attorney from nearby Palm Harbor who said he has settled several Dunedin code enforcement cases on behalf of homeowners.

    It’s almost Gestapo-like,” Orsatti said. “You can have a screw in the wrong spot. It’s an easy fix, but until you get that contractor to come back out there and sign off on it, those fines are running every day.”
    https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/ne...es/1691703001/
    Ain't nothin' new. Florida has been [in]famous for its "paint-chip Nazis" since at least the '90s ...

    FROM: "All I Think Is That It's Stupid": An Interview with Dave Barry

    Reason: Why did you leave Coral Gables, the Miami suburb that's the libertarian paradise?

    Barry: God, you talk about a libertarian nightmare! We got a ticket for painting our own living room white. And they came to the door, a guy in a uniform.

    Reason: This is inside the house?

    Barry: The interior living room. It turned out you had to have a permit if the job cost more than $50. I don't know what you can possibly do for less than $50 to have somebody come in your house. I had to pay the painter to go down to the city hall. This is after I called up city hall and ended up actually screaming. The painter spent a day getting a permit to do a job that took about half a day to actually do.

    Then I wrote a column about that and discovered that there were people in Coral Gables who would wait until 2 o'clock in the morning to replace a sink because to do it during the daytime you'd see the trucks outside. Two trucks. That's a carpenter and a plumber. So that's two different permits. People were not fixing their houses because they didn't know how to get the permits. It was crazy.

    Reason: If you have a cat out of the house, it's supposed to be on a leash there.

    Barry: Yeah, and you're not allowed to park a truck in your driveway. You're not allowed to work on your house on Sunday. The people who enforce these laws are nuts. After I wrote a column on this, I got I don't know how many letters from Coral Gables homeowners, story after story after story, wonderfully horrible stories. And the venom they felt for their own government! You cannot paint the exterior of your house. You have to take the paint chip down to show the paint-chip Nazis. It goes on all the time and it's hilarious. People are afraid to own their own homes. People are afraid their own government will catch them fixing their houses.
    Last edited by Occam's Banana; 07-28-2019 at 04:56 PM.
    The Bastiat Collection · FREE PDF · FREE EPUB · PAPER
    Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850)

    • "When law and morality are in contradiction to each other, the citizen finds himself in the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense, or of losing his respect for the law."
      -- The Law (p. 54)
    • "Government is that great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
      -- Government (p. 99)
    • "[W]ar is always begun in the interest of the few, and at the expense of the many."
      -- Economic Sophisms - Second Series (p. 312)
    • "There are two principles that can never be reconciled - Liberty and Constraint."
      -- Harmonies of Political Economy - Book One (p. 447)

    · tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito ·

  15. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by Origanalist View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by ATruepatriot View Post
    This is the exact local tyranny the Constitution of the United States of America was designed to protect each individual everywhere from.
    And yet....here we are.

    A lynch mob with a barrel of hot tar and some feathers would make for a better deterrent.
    You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Origanalist again.

  16. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by Origanalist View Post
    And yet....here we are.

    A lynch mob with a barrel of hot tar and some feathers would make for a better deterrent.
    I agree.
    “The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world it leaves to its children.” ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  17. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    The city of Dunedin, Florida, which has been under scrutiny for massive fines lodged against homeowners, has dismissed a lawsuit against a woman who faced more than $100,000 in code enforcement fines at a house she no longer owned.The city said in a brief court filing late Monday that it is voluntarily dismissing the lawsuit against Kristi Allen, a former Dunedin resident who was fined $103,559 – about twice her yearly income – over a dirty swimming pool and overgrown vegetation at a house she said she left to the bank eight years ago.

    The dismissal comes about a month after USA TODAY chronicled Allen's story and the city's history of imposing exorbitant fines – sometimes tens of thousands of dollars at a time – for violating laws that prohibit grasses taller than 10 inches, recreational vehicles parked on streets at certain hours, sidings and bricks that don't match or dirty pools. Over the past 5½ years, the city has collected nearly $3.6 million in fines while its revenue grew.

    Dunedin's lawyers did not explain why they're dropping the lawsuit, which was filed late last year in order to collect the fines from Allen. It also is not clear if the city still intends to collect the fines through other means. The city and its attorneys did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

    More at: https://news.yahoo.com/florida-city-...153303489.html
    //



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