Let's move next to a _______ and complain about it!

In My Humble Opinion
41

Actually I’ll bet the others have changed as well.

I’m sure that more people fly into and out of that airport and a completly different class of plane as well. Perhaps the gun club is more crowded now that the town has grown.

The city should have thought of these things when zoning the area but just because something’s been there for a long time is no reason to excuse it for ever.

And most people I know can’t move anywhere they want. They can move to where they can afford and then they have to take into account the schools, the commute and all these other factors. I’m sure the real estate agent was real honest about the noise as well.
Oh, yeah, first thing saturday morning 50 guys are out there firing shotguns.

42

Well, that’s the thing, innit? People usually know about the ‘nuisances’ that make the houses affordable. They have the choice to accept it or not. They might not be able to live anywhere they want, but they can choose their inconveniences.

Incidentally, I’m surprised no one has picked up on my ‘shooting ranger’ typo in the OP. :stuck_out_tongue:

43

Zebra, what kind of fool plunks down several hundred K for anything without checking it out? Granted, it is easy to get taken in by geohazards that you expect the city to take care of, such as that the city allowed a development to be built on land that the state condemned. (There are several houses like that just a few blocks from me.) Of course, after you’ve been around a while you discover that local politics is based on the whims of development. This city approved a development under the flight path of its own airport. The developer argued that with high quality windows the noise wouldn’t be too annoying. :rolleyes: Still, no one will miss the fact that the airport is right there.

How do you miss farms and airports? (We won’t discuss the fact that generally farms aren’t in cities, and the surrounding land may not be zoned at all, or that any zoning that allows farms obviously allows low density housing as well.) Even shooting ranges are usually well marked. In the case of the Air Force Academy, not only is its runway and football statium visible from interstate, it uses the same exits as the people who moved in. This is an upscale development. These people did not move in because they could afford no where else, and the commute is horrible, so they didn’t move there because it was the only reasonable commute.

44

Ugh, at least you guys don’t live in Santa Cruz.

Although there are a few old-time holdouts, a lot of the homeowners here are fairly new. They came in during the dot com boom, because Santa Cruz is a much nicer place to live than San Jose. There is already a lot of bitterness towards them, because they are blamed for the insanely inflated housing market. But they get back at us by being bitter about the very things that make Santa Cruz exist.

The first thing they complain about is the college. The college students complain about this, too. The college is a major force in the town- which is, after all, a pleasent college town. And it is expanding. This is somehow a big shock to everyone. Now everyone is trying to stop this. There are protests. There are perpetual op-ed articles.

The problem is that it is a public college and it has a public charter to serve the people of California. As such, it has to educate the people of California, not the elite few. We are in the first year ever that our public colleges could not meet the promise they made with our state a hundred years ago- to educate all that qualify. Which of these kids are they willing to tell face-to-face that they don’t get to go to college? When these students protest to stop growth, do they really not realize that they are denying the very same experience they had to a bunch of kids and they will probably be most effective at keeping out the poor and the needy that are just trying to improve their lives?

They usually start talking about saving the redwoods, too. The problem is that the college sits on a huge plot of new-growth that used to be a bunch of cow fields and nothing and was planted when it was specifically earmarked for public use a hundred years ago. It’s only because this land was going to be used as a college that there are redwoods on it to cut down. It’s also sorrounded by thousands of acres of perfectly safe national parks and the like.

Anyway, politics aside, the college has a 50-year plan complete with very detailed plans for exactly where and when it is going to expand. You can walk in today and see it. They hold public information sessions on it constantly. It’s been sitting there for 30 years perfectly visible to all. I’m sorry, you don’t walk in to a town with a young public university in it and then bitch that it’s acting like a public university and trying to educate the public.

Then they bitch about the tourists. We/ve been a tourist town for a hundred years. It’s a great deal- the tourists bring us money, we have a prosperous, liberal, beautiful town full of great services, parks, public areas, etc.

They create compex and confusing traffic systems in the tourist part of town to make sure that they never have to be affronted by the sight of a tourist. Of course, this area of town is also where all the poor people that work in the places that bring the tourists that run our town live. Then they are rude, bitch and moan, write editorials, prevent any development no matter how increadably sensitive it is,

Once again, we’d all be a dusty bunch of nothing without these tourists. They are scads of free money for our town. Without them, this place would not be the rich idealic community with a sparkling downtown, festivals everywhere, affordable health care for the poor, lavish parks, an amazing bus system, etc. Our city is broke now thanks to their bitching. And it’s the poor that are going to pay.

Thank god I’m moving!