Friday, November 07, 2008

Large home looms over Valley Road and splashes neighbors

Many of our established neighborhoods demonstrate the unique character of our town. As redevelopment occurs and homes are torn down our natural environment is diminished. Some new owners and their architect do a good job in integrating into the existing character of our neighborhoods. Sometimes new owners look at their property with total disregard for their neighbors and push to the absolute limits of the property rights doing great harm to the properties on the block. These out of place new homes can create visual domination over the natural environment, shed off tons of storm water, and remove natural buffers and virtual neutral zones between structures. Large and tall structures can also cut off needed sunlight in the winter time and cool breezes in the summer months to adjoining properties. The adjoining property owners property rights in these situations are compromised. The City should re-examine our laws to protect existing residents from this intrusion and destruction of our neighborhoods.

On Valley Road a new very large home was built in a very wet part of the street. This new construction demands to be drained so water won't flood the home and push waters onto adjoining properties. The cost of this new storm that runs from the far end of Valley out to County Line Road is expensive. There is currently an 50+ year old storm sewer that serves the street but is insufficient as per what is currently required by City code. While this new resident is required to drain his property to build his new home, he has the option of asking the rest of the residents to pay him back in the future. This recapture agreement is presented to the City Council and can be accepted as presented, accepted and changed, or simply rejected.


How much burden should be placed on existing residents for new development infrastructure on their block. I say that no costs should be applied to any adjoining residents because of the building of a new home. If someone wants to squeeze a large home in, let them squeeze the money out of their pocket and not reach into ours.

The other question we have to address as we look into new sustainable storm water practices is at what thresholds we should require properties to hook up into public storm water systems. The current law says building an additional 250 sq. ft. requires hookup to public storm water system. I am suggesting we increase this threshold substantially and look for ways to deal with storm water on site instead of channelizing it down our sewers and into flood ways.

We also immediately need to create legal channels for installation of rain barrels and rain gardens to protect our properties. We should also not make folks hook up to storm sewers if it is not needed. French drains, storage containers like rain barrels, and rain gardens need to be incorporated into our ordinances immediately.

The City has promoted and demonstrated new storm water approaches and now needs to make it work for homeowners. Nature always has better answers than engineers and bankers. We should listen to reason and always look for ways to reduce the pressure on our environment and costs to our existing residents.