We live on a narrow rural road in an area zoned for farms and residences. We have complained numerous times about the grading/hauling business across the road because it lowers the value of our home to prospective buyers. The county isn’t listening.

Adding insult to injury is the fact the business brings heavy equipment into its compound via tractor-trailers that can’t make the turn onto our narrow road without dragging the trailer section through the right-of-way on three sides of the intersection. This creates a constant mudhole, one that certainly doesn’t help property values.

So for the past several weeks, the county has been “improving” the intersection by: (1) Putting in new drainage culverts, (2) Creating a wider section of the pavement so the tractor-trailers can turn without cutting across the grass, (3) And today, apparently widening the road several feet up the road from the T intersection.

We want to complain. But when we do, we get nasty e-mails from the illegal business that basically ask us why we’re causing trouble. We keep pointing out that the neighborhood isn’t zoned for business, much less industrial. They seem deaf to that concept and believe they have the right to do whatever they want on their own property.  And once the nasty e-mails have come and gone, the county lets the business keep operating.

So, everyone out here is paying higher taxes for road repair so an illegal business can keep operating. Yes, I know there’s a good-old-boy attitude out here that says it’s okay to sneak past the regulations whenever you can. But I draw the line when it harms a property owner’s neighbors.

We feel rather stuck because we need to get out of here but we’re not sure anyone will buy our property. When we had this house built, we played by the rules. It’s too bad the county doesn’t feel the same way about the nearby property owners.

—Malcolm

P. S. If 10,000 of you will each buy all of my books, we might be able to escape this neighborhood. Just a thought.