Forecast for 03.16/10

03-16-10
Forecast and Faery Finder
By Janice Scott-Reeder and the Bitwit
Down with Broward County: Pricing People Out of Homes with “Improvements”!

According to Llewellyn’s Magical Almanac, today’s color is Maroon and the incense is Ylang-Ylang. Today is the Flemish St. Urho’s Day.

FORECASTS:

Astrologically, the Moon enters Aries at Two thirty two AM EDT. Over night energy is high making it difficult to sleep. You can channel it into doing something good or just nurse old wounds. By dawn you are totally disgusted with limits and ready to run out and do something. Unfortunately it is not a good day to make changes so just work on finishing things up. Expect a few social calls in the wee hours.

Deck: Navigators Tarot of the Mystic Sea.

Today’s Tarot Card is the Universe: consecration. Today is the beginning of major change in our lives. Embrace it.

Deck: Healing with the Fairies.
The Faeries say:
.Break free of the past today.
.
Today’s Cat Comfort Card is:
Cat Suit: “Be daring. Be wild. Be bold.”

Deck: The Fairies’ Oracle by Brian Froud & Jessica MacBeth
Today’s Faery Finder is on the lookout for:
The Guardian at the Gate makes certain we do not cross the threshold into new experiences without being ready. So don’t be frightened. He had your best interests at heart.

Today’s Lo Shu Number is 8 and the Element is wood. The sheep finds conflict today.
Today is an auspicious day for haircuts, starting construction and births.

Today’s Message from the Universe is: “I now choose to communicate freely and openly everything that needs to be said. I free my mind from all limiting thoughts and I am now at peace with myself and others. I no longer worry about what other people think. I know that I am loved and totally supported by the Universe.” Annie Marquier creating a world of peace one thought at a time.

COMMENTARIES BY JANICE SCOTT-REEDER

I still don’t have internet service. It came up at 1 in the morning and went down by morning. The shop had no DSL either. They are trying to blame the house on our wiring. Now someone explain how that causes the shop DSL to go down? The simple fact is they oversold bandwidth with all the smart phones and now the system keeps crashing from having too many users.
Aside from the pain, that isn’t the only thing keeping me up at night this week.
One in eight houses is in foreclosure. Doing a little check of the neighborhood last night I would say a quarter of the people here are renting rooms to keep a roof over their heads and eat. This is a middle class neighborhood and we, like everyone else in the middle class, are stretched to the breaking point financially.
So what do we get in the mail? We get a letter from the county with their latest and greatest new plans to install storm drains, sidewalks and water and sewer. They have one Hell of a lot of nerve. I am also guessing someone’s relative is getting a sweetheart contract the Broward County Taxpayers will be paying for.
First off, I have lived here for 35 years and in those years, we have only had street flooding once when we got 16 inches of rain in less than 3 hours. We also had walking catfish zipping down the street. Compared to the rest of the area, we were actually dry. No one’s house flooded. No one was in danger. We do not need storm drains to carry the water that should be going into the aquifer out into the ocean so we can have more salt water intrusion than we already have. This is boondoggle. If anyone is having any problems is the duplexes who paved their parking lot and now the water has no where to go. Their fault, not ours. My shop has a drain in the parking lot and doesn’t flood. Even then, the water is gone in a few hours.
Secondly, we have never had sidewalks and don’t want them. BSO is out here at least twice a day on vandalism and theft charges. All we need is the teenage perpetrators off their golf carts, on skate boards and closer to houses to multiply that problem.
Both the projects will increase our house values which is no use to us but lets the County raise our assessments and our taxes.
Finally comes the water and sewer and the real money maker for the County. The last estimate I heard 10 years ago was 60,000.00 per house, that they would place a lien on our homes and lets us pay it off at two hundred and some bucks per month. That figure did not include the monthly sewer fee or the estimated water bill which will drive it up to at least 400.00 per month. Do you know anyone with that kind of money laying around their budget?
That is not the end of the cost. That only puts the line in front of our house. We then have to pay a private company, cash up front, to remove any tree, dig two trenches because our water lines are one side on the house and the sewer on the other and hire a license plumber to lay the pipe ( which we also have to buy) and hook into their pipe, for which we have to pay a hook up fee so their engineer can come buy and see it is done right, not to mention permits that have to be paid for to do this. The septic tank must be pumped and filled with sand (half a load), all to be paid in cash. The total bill in Hialeah to do this at my mother’s house with no trees to remove and only one trench and line needed (we already had city water) over 40 years ago was $5,000.00. I estimate our out of pocket cost to be between $40,000.00 and $80,000.00 per house and then 400.00 a month.
Not only that, but this increases the value of our houses by at least $60,000.00 or the amount of the lien which raises our taxes and for most of us will effectively wipe out all money saved with our homestead exemption. So, we get whacked in the pocket book by the County twice.
Where do they get off in this economy asking people to pay that sort of money? Of course, if we do not hook up in the allotted time, usually less than 30 days, they can start fining us with no notification at any rate they so choose and at any arbitrary date they choose, auction our houses off for the fees with no notification until the moment the auctioneer arrives on the front lawn and yes, it is perfectly legal. The State Attorney’s office was appalled to discover they were actively doing just that and there was nothing he could do.
Then again, this neighborhood, condemned or auctioned off for violation fees, makes a really nice commercial development as it sits right on the canal and county line with a park on the other side, 441 on the third side and total commercial development to Lyon’s road. This is nothing more than a land grab to push us out of our homes and they are going to do just that. By perverting the state laws, they can force us have water and sewer.
They tried ten years ago to say there were grants available to help us with all the other fees. When I looked those very grants up, they were for low income people in areas with out houses to bring indoor plumbing to them. The Feds discovered people were lying to do just what they suggested we would have no trouble doing, cracked down, demanded the money back with interest and closed the loopholes. It was in the national newspapers. Lying on a grant form is a Federal Offense which can put you in jail, fast.
Trust the government to take care of you. Yup, my ancestors did that once and we all know how that turned out: pretty close to genocide.