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Title: Residents have a new ally in fight to grow vegetables in their front yard
Source:
Miami Herald
URL Source: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/loc ... i-shores/article198808229.html
Published: May 7, 2018
Author: Howard Cohen
Post Date: 2018-05-07 13:08:51 by Deckard
Keywords: None
Views: 1613
Comments: 18
The Florida Senate Community Affairs committee approved of a bill on Tuesday that prohibits cities and counties from regulating where residents could grow vegetable gardens. If the bill, originally filed in the Florida Senate as SB 1776 last month by Sen. Aaron Bean, R-Fernandina Beach, and Sen. Rob Bradley, R-Orange Park, sounds familiar, that’s because the battle has played out in Miami Shores for the past five years. In 2013, village residents Hermine Ricketts and Tom Carroll were ordered to uproot a 17-year-old vegetable garden they had grown in their front yard or pay a daily $50 fine. The bill still has several more hurdles to pass before it can be officially voted upon. In December, Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal upheld Miami Shores’ ban on front-yard vegetable gardens from a November decision, so the couple took their case to the Florida Supreme Court, where their fight is pending. According to the decision, “Miami Shores homeowners may have virtually anything in their front yard. They may decorate with garden gnomes, pink flamingos and trolls. They may park their boats and jet skis. And they are free to grow whatever trees, flowers, shrubs, grasses, fruits and berries they desire.” But vegetables are nixed. The court said the village has the right to regulate landscaping and design in residential neighborhoods. This could change if the bill passes. According to the bill, “a county, municipality, or other political subdivision in Florida may not regulate vegetable gardens on residential properties. Any such local ordinance or regulation regulating vegetable gardens on residential properties is void and unenforceable.” The proposal includes exceptions for regulations related to water use during drought conditions, fertilizer use or control of invasive species. In effect, what Ricketts and Carroll have been doing all these years is good for the state, SB 1776 argues. “The Legislature intends to encourage the development of sustainable cultivation of vegetables and fruits at all levels of production, including for personal consumption, as an important interest of the state.” At the committee meeting, Bean implied the bill’s number, 1776, was symbolic. “It’s America. Let’s join together and say we are preserving our country’s core values and that is the right to grow our own food,” the Palm Beach Post reported. The argument, that the village’s restriction tramples on property rights, jibes with what the Miami Shores couple have argued all along. “That’s what government does — interferes in people’s lives,” Ricketts told the Miami Herald after the December ruling. “We had that garden for 17 years. We ate fresh meals every day from that garden. Since the village stepped its big foot in it, they have ruined our garden and my health.” They have since uprooted the garden while the case traveled through the courts. But the bill isn’t a done deal as it has been met with opposition from the Florida League of Cities, as its representatives counter that the bill ignores safety issues from unharvested crops and doesn’t restrict gardens to personal consumption of the vegetables or limit the gardens’ size, the Post reported. Sen. David Simmons, R-Longwood, suggested altering the bill’s “strong language” to allow local governments flexibility to “reasonably regulate but not prohibit” vegetable gardens — such as the one in Miami Shores.
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#1. To: Deckard (#0)
Right. Get ready for a flood of lawsuits over "why is that garden allowed but not mine?"
Yep. Which is why the right answer is to categorically prohibit cities, towns, and Homeowner's Associations from restricting vegetable gardens on residential properties. Strip away all power and the situation will be clear. Then, if some individual homeowner goes berserk and lets the pumpkins all rot, or some similar nonsense, the standard nuisance laws already cover that.) People can't do anything legal in a way that's a nuisance, so if some individual goes berserk, that individual can be punished. It is unreasonable that anybody should have authority over people growing vegetables on their own property, and because cities, towns and Homeowner's Associations are acting unreasonably, the best way to deal with it is to absolutely nullify all power for them to do it. Then let the nuisance law handle the individual cases of idiots (there won't be many idiots: actually growing and tending a garden takes a lot of work, and nobody's going to put in all that work and then just let the pumpkins rot. But if somebody does, the nuisance law handles that.
How about categorically prohibiting vegetable gardens in the front yards of residential properties? Your way leads to "Nuisance? Why is mine a nuisance and his isn't? His garden is uglier than mine and he let's his vegetables rot on the vine."
#6. To: misterwhite (#4)
No. That's a fundamental violation of property rights and an invasion into private space with power. My way respects property rights and privileges ownership rights over the right of people looking onto other people's property and being annoyed. It remains firmly in the tradition of Anglo-Saxon property law, which is that your home is your castle and you can do as you please with your own property unless it becomes a serious nuisance to the enjoyment of others around you. "I don't like how that looks" has never been sufficient grounds to reduce an owner's property rights. Only nuisance could do that, and the nuisance had to be objective: piles of garbage and rats, not a neighbor say "I don't like that". That's been the Common Law for nine hundred years, and it has worked pretty well. Your way overturns nine hundred years of tradition and precedent and assigns great power to municipalities and neighbors. We saw a truly massive erosion of private property rights with the Kelo decision, wherein the fact that business interests can promise a municipality enhanced tax revenues is sufficient for the town to use its eminent domain powers to sweep people out of their homes at low, low condemnation pricing. The state of the law has certainly flowed in the direction of what you advocate, which is government control of what you can do with your land, and government ability to take land at bargain prices and reassign it to cronies. It is the question for the future: will we continue to march in the direction of collective control of private property, both land and financial assets, or will we return to the concept of security of private property. To me, the notion that the government has a say in whether or not one grows legal vegetables on one's own property is offensive to liberty. Of COURSE the government should have no say in that. But increasingly it has asserted that it DOES have that power. The question is whether there will be a public backlash sufficient to move back in the direction of private property rights, which I favor, or the public enjoys the enhanced right to control people's private property, which you favor. I don't know the outcome of that. Generally I have seen most of what I believe in defeated and in retreat my whole life, so I've gotten used to seeing rights eroded. This offends me. You are much more in favor of that. But I'm used to being offended, am jaded by it, and have found that mental shifts that make the intolerable tolerable are the best way to deal with it. If personal property rights and security in the enjoyment of personal property continues in the Kelo direction, then it does not make sense to dream of home ownership in America, because property taxes are pretty high, and there's no security of equity in government takings. It makes far more sense to not place one's assets in the land or property ownership within America, where property ownership becomes an expensive asset subject to capture by political forces, a chain that can be used to manipulate the owner. It makes far more sense to have a much lighter property footprint and to secure long-term leasing. And if one wishes to have a secure pied-a-terre somewhere, to look to foreign lands where property rights are more secure.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latestsuggested altering the bill’s “strong language” to allow local governments flexibility to “reasonably regulate but not prohibit” vegetable gardens
#3. To: misterwhite (#1)
#4. To: Vicomte13 (#3)
Which is why the right answer is to categorically prohibit cities, towns, and Homeowner's Associations from restricting vegetable gardens on residential properties.
Replies to Comment # 4. How about categorically prohibiting vegetable gardens in the front yards of residential properties?
End Trace Mode for Comment # 4.
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