project started 2004 --End who knows ??

[Michelle K linnane]

Hi Guys
I have been asked by many of my friends to document this project and finally decided to start that today. Please be patient, with me as this will take a lot of posts but I hope you all think it will be worth it in the end.
I have always wanted to own a piece of land I could train my dogs on and do what ever I want to when I want to. In 1989 I was involved in a head on collision car accident by drunk driver. Hospitalized, with many broken bones for about 10 days and out of work for a long time. I was a mess.
When I got the money from the accident I used for a down payment on my land 106 acres for $69,000 I think it was 1993 or 1994 in the town of Esperance NY(I can not remember year exactly) I bought the land while I still lived in New Fairfield CT.
My plan was once my house was paid for I would move up to NY state and live. In 2003 the house across the street for me sold for $560,000 my house was not paid for yet but close about 5 years away, but I decided now was the time to sell.
It was nothing to brag about, just a 3 bedroom raised ranch with separate garage on 2 acres. But I was the cheapest house in the neighbor hood and it was not a bad position to be in. I gave away or sold everything I owned that I could not fit into 2 storage units. The house went on the market in Jan and we closed in April of 2004. I had nothing on the land. After I closed I bought a travel trailer and moved into a camp ground about 5 miles from my land.
I had been laid off from IBM so the job was not an issue. I decided there would never be a better time to do this then 2004.
It begins!!! Below are pcis of my house in CT.

 

[Michelle K linnane]

Here are some pics of my land. There are arrows pointing to trees in the photos to act as reference point as I start to do stuff to land. You will later see the house, barn other structures. The area I am in is very heavy, heavy clay. It is great for digging ponds but, very rocky, poorly drained, not good too many good house sites. But great for what I wanted it for to dig dog training ponds.
So here me and my 5 labs are up to our butts in tall grass, no place to call home except a 29 travel trailer in a camp ground. So I call the guy who dug my ponds the first year I had the land and we go to work.

 

[Michelle K linnane]

Well my first priority was a driveway into the place. So we start to get busy I am state road so I need county approval for my driveway placement out on to RT 162 which is a state road. We work back from the place I am going to have the house as I did not have a permit and sometime county officials can be a little mad if you do not follow protocol. We had plenty to do what difference did it make I knew roughly where I wanted my house, septic, well driveway and barn. So we started.
The second priority was to be able to run a dog boarding kennel and needed to start to develop the land and go before planning board to get kennel approved.
I go before the planning board for the first time in June 2004. In a town without zoning I figured how hard could it be? There is no zoning, but site planning approval. Especially some place this rural.
This was about June in 2004 I am looking and talking to different pole barn dealers. FL, Morton, ETC

 

[Farmerford]

We are looking forward to the next installment. Something tells me that the permitting did not go smoothly.

 

[Michelle K linnane]

It is July and I want to find me barn builder and get on the schedule. Now for the barn I had a design in mind. I went to Morton and they soon eliminated themselves. They are used to doing horse barns and wanted to do 10 foot ceiling and I did not want to heat that much head space I just felt it was a waste of money then and would be in the future. The salesman did plans that were 10 feet and I told him you do not listen that was not what I wanted and the sales man was rather insulting and I walked out. I dealt with finger lakes and they were stupid they want to pour a 4 foot foundation wall for the whole barn. Now the barn that I was looking at building was 48 X 90 and 30 X 40. The cement would break me. I finally one called Conestoga building they listen to everything I said help designed the building and that was the one I picked. At that time the planning board had delayed me and extra month and metal prices went up. Due to the fact I did not want to sign a contract until I had building approved I had to pay another $5000 for metal. At that point they warned me the price was going up again so I signed before I had the approval. So I signed the barn deal in July 2004. Ok Barn deal is setup.
It is now august we have the rough driveway in and I have already been before planning board 2 times for kennel. I have some trouble with a neighbor and 2 members of planning board but get kennel approved with a 3 to 2 vote in my favor. The next day I go house shopping with my uncle. He said to me to get off my butt as I was not spending the winter with him.
My uncle asked what I wanted in a house I told him 1 floor, open floor plan,
kitchen island and nice size master bedroom. I went to different modular dealers and found one that many models. They two of the same models that had all my wishes. Except one had log siding and I did not want any part of that and a fireplace which I did not want either. I asked the salesman why they had two of the same models and he said someone had order the house and it was along the road and kids set fire to one side and the people had to take another home they could not wait. Well they replaced the burn side b ordering just 1 half of the house and place on the lot. I got a very good deal with set up and it worked out to $48 a square foot. OK house issue settled.
I have had a service request into national grid for power since Feb of 2004 and now it is getting close to Sept an no power. National Grid wanted to see a foundation and well before they would install power finally I went over the head of the idiot I was dealing with. And finally got them to come out do the electric National Grid is the worst company to deal with to get new service. What a pain in the ***.
I have had a well driller lined up for months he does not show and does not show. Well it is now Almost Sept and I decide to get somebody else. Wells in our area are a problem they are very deep casing all the way and sometimes have heavy iron, clay and sulfur. Water can be a night mare. We are pouring the foundation for the house one day and down the driveway comes the sheriff department with a served with a stop work order.
Unknown to me I was going to be paid many visits from the Sheriff department. We are right in the middle of the pour and I said to them you might as well take me jail as we are not stopping. Thank god they do not seem to be to anxious to that, they asked me how long will it take you to finish? I said we need at least one more truck, of cement maybe two hours, they said they had to go to the other end of the county and could not be back any earlier then three hours so please hurry and finish. We had no idea is anybody was watching. I have to say the sheriff department guy acted pretty decent. I had to appear in court the next day. The next three weeks are kind of a fuzzy, when you need to be there doing things, and you have to be at an attorneys there was not much I could do, so I have no construction pictures of my barn it went from not being there to being there.
But this is what it looked like in Oct of 2004. There is more to come about lawsuit but for now take a look at what we got in with 3 months.

 

[Michelle K linnane]

I never did finished the store about having to go to court. Well my neighbor filed what is called an article 78 against the town(which claims they did not follow proper procedure) believe or not this was in supreme court and a judge that was appointed by the president of the united states found against me that I could not run a dog boarding business on 106 acres in a rural and agriculture setting. My building permit for my barn was revoked while the building was only 1/2 complete.
It is now Oct 2004 and I have to go back before planning board again. There would not be time to do it before snow was to fly. The building inspector was a really good guy.
He was the one to tell me my permits had been revoked. My spineless attorney who told me we would not have a problem never even called. I asked the building inspector what I am to do, everything will be ruined by spring. He said let turn this into personal use and go back before the planning board in Jan after you have stuff done for winter. So that is what we did the building inspector was the best friend I had on this deal he was very good to me. So even thought someone spent a whole bunch of money to stop my barn it was up, it did not do them any good! And it was beautiful!
There is a picture of the house and the barn and the distance between the
two between the house and the barn is the neighbor that sued the town and brough article 78. if you look at pic 68-32a you can see his home.
Have included a picture of 4 of my labs. We still do not have electric.
The run from the road was over 1400 feet and My uncle helped me with all the ditch work. We had to pick all the rock out of the ditch then we have to cover with a foot of sand. We had 5 dump trucks full of sand. Once the electric was in we had to cover with sand then when we refilled ditch I got in the ditch while to dozer kind of pushed the sod over the sand then we had put dirt back in. What a nightmare job. Everyday before we worked in the ditch we had to pump it everynight it filled with water.(no rain)
I hope this makes some sense, so much was going on I thought I would lose my mind. I was trying to build my dream and everything turned into a nightmare due to lawsuit.

 

[EddieWalker]

Great story. I'm on the edge of my seat, waiting to hear what happens next!!!

Eddie

 

[duanekeys]

Me too! I'm very curious to hear the rest of the story.

 

[Kyle241]

Another follower! Hope everything turned out well after all because as they say, "nothing in life is free'. It seems like there is always someone out there wanting to stomp on your dream.

 

[Michelle K linnane]

Well as you can see the shell of the barn is up, I have a house to live in and now have to start all over again and go back before the planning board. One thing that I did not mention was the tax assessor wrote a letter for the neighbor's law suit that really hurt me. The tax assessor said that my kennel would negatively effect property values by 10 and 20%. That letter the tax assessor was very damaging to me and the judge even placed in his decision he felt he had to protect the neighbor hood property values.
The one thing the judge did not know is that same year the tax assessor raised everybody taxes including mine. My neighbor in back of me was building a new house and they raised him to the full assessment of his building permit was also done with me. Now after going through all the, I am starting to looking into things and see what everybody taxes really are. So the tax assessor wrote a letter against and then did the opposite and raised everybody taxes on our road except for one person (the neighbor who sued the town). I foiled all the building permits to find out that same person was still not a full assessment and was still being taxes at $54,000 less his building permit which was issued in 1999 and now it is 2005. Don't that seem strange. Well this was war, I had a building I was paying more taxes on then my house and could not make a living from it. So I started to look at everybody taxes very carefully.
To save time I took picture of legal documents so I could email them. I have included some winter pictures. So once I had the facts correct the county had a web page and I could get all tax info online so there no mistake. But it was very difficult to use and I started my own web page with the info from that one so people could see the facts.
This got very nasty. The one thing I did that helped more then anything else, was I made the funny looking sign that looked like it was painted by a kid. I attached a sheet of plywood to a trailer and placed two 6X6 in the ground and chained the trailer to posts.
I was able to move trailer so there was nothing anybody could do. That sign was up for along time, and many people stopped and looked at and took pictures. It got a lot of attention believe me. I placed my neighbors name on the sign and the two guys from planning board that gave me a hard time. It seems they paid the lowest land taxes in town and one of them was one tax grievance committee, well is that not a surpise? Once I had the web site done I advertised it in my shopper which is our local version of the pennysaver. that is a free paper with many things for sale so everybody reads it from cover to cover and everybody hates taxes. In small towns everybody lives in a glass house. I was beside myself and they did not know it at the time, but they messed with the wrong person. Most of the people when given a hard time would just give up and I could not do and was not going to that. I had a dream to build and was not ready to let someone come between me and that dream.