NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WZTV) — The second highest court in America will decide whether the city of Nashville is violating the constitutional rights of homeowners. The issue is forcing new homeowners to pay for their own city sidewalks.
People like Jason Mayes, who really isn’t a builder. He is a dad, a family man and taxpayer who built a home on McCall Street and got a $9,000 bill for his sidewalk.
“It’s been frustrating. This was something that we didn’t plan for in our construction budget. It came right off of our money to finish our house,” Mayes said. “We actually have an unfinished space in our house. Obviously we don’t have landscaping partly due to this.”
There’s more. The city really doesn’t want Jason to build a sidewalk in front of his home. There is a culvert at the front end of his property that collects run-off. If he built a sidewalk here, it could cause terrible flooding in the neighborhood.
He got charged by the county for the price of building a sidewalk in front of his house that he did not request or wanted, and it cannot and will not be built anyway because it interferes with the flow of rainwater.
This is how you get your government building killdozed.
Councilwoman Angie Emery Henderson of Forest Hills sponsored the bill. The buck stops with her
The mind hurts with the stupidity of this.
Forcing home owners to pay for sidewalks, and other improvements, has been going on forever and I don’t see a court ruling against this. Forcing them to pay for sidewalks when they have no intention of actually putting in sidewalks is another matter.