Back when I lived in Raleigh nearly 20 years ago there was a proposal (I honestly don’t remember if it passed) to charge people for storm water usage based on the amount of pavement on their property. The reasoning being pavement prevents water from soaking into the ground, meaning more water going down the storm drain. Opponents dubbed it a “rain tax”, although IMO if anything it was a pavement tax.
We get all of the above mentioned posts, but we also get a lot of “Was that an earthquake???”
Dammit! I jinxed us. We just had an earthquake.
Here in northeast Ohio we pay this. There’s a flat fee for most residential homes and another for businesses (due to having less permeable surface on their property). Read all about it here.
Stormwater runoff is a huge problem. Nobody seemed to take stormwater runoff into account until 20 years ago, but we’ve got all of this existing infrastructure from before 20 years ago just sitting around with bad runoff patterns.
USGS says there was a 4.5 near Malibu at 13:49, then a 3.0 aftershock at 13:50. I guess the first one was caused by your first post, and the second one was caused by your next post. How about you quit talking about earthquakes??
My lips are sealed.
My favorite is the vegan who would go out jogging in the neighborhood during dinnertime. He got offended by the smell of cooking meat wafting through his neighbors open windows so he asked them all to close their windows while he made his run.
Even if it’s apocryphal, it’s still funny.
Hillsboro, Oregon.
City is on a flat valley floor, criss-crossed with creeks and wetlands. Dealing with stormwater is a pretty big deal to prevent flooding.
Stormwater hereabouts empties into Puget Sound or associated waterways, so it has to be treated to remove surface oil and suchlike. It’s a per-parcel fee.
Well, hurry up and post it on NextDoor!
Every time I see it, I feel a little defensive. Those are my initials.
I’ve never heard of SMH before this thread. I consider myself stupider for having gained this knowledge.
I have never seen anyone under the age of 50 use it. They might as well add, “Kids these days.”
Around here, the stormwater tax is an anti-flooding tax. It’s used to fund storm sewers and flood control measures.
It’s based on how much “impervious” land you have as estimated on your property records- the larger the house/garage/parking lot/etc… the more you pay, under the thinking that they’ll have to deal with all the rainfall that lands on impervious surfaces like a house, parking lot, driveway, etc… There are tiers- for example, I pay $11.59 for 3509 impervious square feet, but some others I know nearby have around 5500 impervious sq. ft. and are in the $18.96 tier. There’s a nifty GIS map that lets you look at all the city parcels of land and see what each one’s stormwater bill would be.
Here in the northeast, we’re mostly a pizza/tex-mex/red sauce town. Barbeque restaurants are few in number, and fiercely debated online. “Restaurant A is the best!” no…“The New Restaurant B blows them away!” It gets very heated. But there is always, always someone who helpfully suggests we hop in our cars and drive an hour to some hole in the wall nearly across the state, and that is where the GOOD BBQ, the ONLY good stuff, can be found, and I am right now SMH.
Earlier this year I ordered a package and they dumped it off on the front step of the building. I got it into the lobby. It was a huge, ungainly box weighing about 30 lbs. I live three flights up, no elevator. The apartment maintenance man said he wasn’t allowed to carry it up because, liability. So I posted on Nextdoor and asked if anyone had any suggestions, and I got at least half a dozen responses. Two good citizens offered to come over and bring my package up. For free (I would have paid $20 or so). So it was nice to know I am not entirely alone in the world and sometimes help is available if asked for.
Barbecue is always kind of contentious. Even here, where barbecue is prevalent, everyone’s got an opinion, and they’re all generally wrong.
We had the same sort of thing happen around here, except that it’s always someone who will recommend certain local places because the owners live nearby, not because their barbecue is anything special at all. And if people think it is, they’re woefully sheltered. There’s also always the people who recommend the like 3 places in the area that are actually top notch, and where you’ll have to wait an hour in line, and the place is only open Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays between 10-2 or until the meat runs out (which is usually prior to 2).
Meanwhile, the new place that does have really good barbecue gets their recommendations drowned out by this nonsense about the crappy 40 year old place, or the impossible to get a table at places.
Drives me crazy. It’s like an active and militant version of Sturgeon’s Law in action.
For sure. I can see a road trip in the summer, if someone else drives, lol. At 4 p.m. after a long day, with three hungry kids, I will drive to get pickup, but I’m not driving to BumFck, Egypt because Joe Bob’s Q-shed might or might not be open or have anything left by the time I get there.
Bob Greene, a newspaper columnist I admired at one time (before he sabotaged his career), wrote a column on that subject, titled something like “Never Drive for Food.” It was his contention that restaurants were like filling stations. One is just as good as another, and that if you have to travel an hour or more to get to one, the trip isn’t worth it.
I signed up for ND using a fake name, and bam, I’m a moderator. Mildly amusing, I’ve found some good tradespeople there. As a mod I get to flag spam, and national politics. Mostly spam. Lately a spate of “vote for my cat/dog/tattoos to be on the cover of some magazine and I can win $10,000.” Yeah, that’ll happen. Mods get beat up, (we’re anonymous) for their horrible anti-right or left bias. Demands that we present ourselves.