Re: “County’s land grab trumped by new state law”
Mr. Unruh,
Thank you for that article. It was very interesting.
In the ’50s, my parents bought land in Pensacola. About 20 acres. We used to go shooting out there and walking much of the land.
It’s been a long time since I’ve tromped that land because I live in Texas now and because of the underbrush being so thick. When I did go back for a visit, I could not see the land from the roads, Mier Henry Road and Mier Henry Lane.
When my parents died, I went to sell the land, and I was notified that it was now considered wetlands by the county, the state and the U.S. government, and I’d have to try to get special permits to build on it.
I do have a friend who walks it and hunts it, and he says part of it is marshy. But as I said, we walked all over it when I was a kid, on a pine-needle carpet.
Over the phone, I was able to get them to reduce my taxes.
But it was not retroactive.
My parents had been paying the taxes on the full market value of the land for years and didn’t know the land was worth a lot less than what they were paying taxes for.
They wouldn’t tell me when it was deemed wetlands, either.
To me, this is another form of stealing from the public.
Keep up the good writing.
Margo Meierhenry Carmichael
