Officials Use Google Earth To Find Unlicensed Pools 650
Officials in Riverhead, New York are using Google Earth to root out the owners of unlicensed pools. So far they've found 250 illegal pools and collected $75,000 in fines and fees. Of course not everyone thinks that a city should be spending time looking at aerial pictures of backyards. from the article: "Lillie Coney, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, DC, said Google Earth was promoted as an aid to curious travelers but has become a tool for cash-hungry local governments. 'The technology is going so far ahead of what people think is possible, and there is too little discussion about community norms,' she said."
Interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
While not Google Earth, as a county government we look at our own aerial photos (added to a GIS layer) to find unpermitted structures as well (mostly just to get them on the tax books - if someone builds without a permit we often have no idea that the structure exists, so it goes untaxed).
While I'm sure it's a LONG ways off, at a recent conference I was at one of the larger city-level governments in the state was actually discussing the possibility of using a form of sonar to track this. I'm not sure if they're just in the brainstorming phase or what, but from what he said the idea was to use it to map out the structures in the city at periodic intervals. Then between intervals you compare to the previous sweep to see anything large that's been added or removed. You filter that against what parcels have not had a permit issued, and you get a good source of info to start following up on construction without permits.
The same city had recently installed various microphones in spots around the city to auto-alert the police department when it detected gunfire (this is already in place, not conceptual). Apparently it is fine tuned enough to be able to tell the difference between an actual gun and things like fireworks and the like.
Re:Should have got planning permission (Score:2, Interesting)
In other words, I bet that very few of those folks built those pools and intentionally tried to get away without paying.
When a pool fails... (Score:5, Interesting)
I had a friend who had a neighbor with an unlicensed above-ground pool. I'm not sure what went wrong, but one day it collapsed, sending all of the water into my friend's back yard, destroying everything there. Building permits are required for good reasons, and they're usually dirt cheap (less than 1% of the project cost). If you're hiring a contractor who doesn't get a building permit, then they're probably not doing it to save you money, but to allow them to skimp on important building code details that might end up costing you a huge amount.
Huh? (Score:1, Interesting)
Reasonable expectation of privacy... (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you have it in a fenced in back yard?
What about the "traditional" points of view but at other wavelengths? If your house is transparent to spectrum X - should you have a reasonable expectation of privacy in say your bedroom?
Some photography laws allow for pictures of private locations from the street, but not using telephoto optics - does that apply to satellites and airplanes use? Perhaps you could make the jurisdiction argument, but if your "camera" is located outside of the jurisdiction, but the person pulling the shutter is within the jurisdiction (e.g. programmed flight, camera, and receives images) does that muddy the waters?
I don't think this excellent reference [krages.com] even addresses the issue at hand.
Re:They collected $75,000... (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow..never heard that one before.
What's next, having to apply for a license to own a fscking charcoal grill on your own patio?
Reminds me of Adam Smith (Score:4, Interesting)
This story reminds me of Adam Smith's reasoning of why properties in his time should have been taxed based on the number of windows, rather than hearths: both for privacy reasons (you can count windows from the outside, whereas hearths require entering the home) and to make evasion harder. When tax assessment time came around, people would brick up their hearths. Sure, you could brick up windows, but since they could be observed any time without you knowing, it makes it much harder to do.
But yeah, maybe we have a problem with the fact that the pool requires a permit, but that's a different issue. Hopefully sitting in an office using Google Earth means they're not driving around wasting gas, or hiring a plane as you mentioned.
Re:Should have got planning permission (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:They collected $75,000... (Score:2, Interesting)
Just like every other permanent construction in a municipality, you gotta have your permits and licenses and everything else in order.
It just goes with the modern view of freedom and property rights in America: my right to the value of my house trumps everyone else's right to do what they please with their property. If everyone in my neighborhood had a better swimming pool than me, my home's value would suffer. That's why we have homeowner associations, zoning laws and so on.
Re:They collected $75,000... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Interesting (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:They collected $75,000... (Score:4, Interesting)
Comparably, government employees typically have salaries a good bit below that in the private sector.
Total bullshit. I used to work for the private sector at a museum that was then taken over by the federal government. When the takeover went through, I gained ridiculous pension and medical benefits, along with a $10,000+ increase in my annual salary.
Re:They collected $75,000... (Score:3, Interesting)
I know I'm taking a leap here, but I'm assuming the license requires the homeowner to purchase a permit to install the pool, which should have been inspected
A safety oriented inspection should not require over $30.
This is pure money raising. $75K/250 pools is $300 per pool. Assuming the "usual" double fee if applied for after work completed, that would be a staggering $150 to pay a city employee to verify there is in fact a fence and a GFCI.
I can safely assume you've never actually participated in a permit inspection. I have, many times. Mostly involves an older semi-retired inspector glancing at the work and driving off. The longest, most detailed inspection I have ever been involved in, oddly enough was a dishwasher where the inspector actually bent over to examine the power wiring (GFCI outlet? etc). That was like 90 freaking seconds, at least three times longer than all the other inspections I've participated in.
Re:They collected $75,000... (Score:2, Interesting)
No sir, they do not.
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2010/03/blog-post.html [blogspot.com]
Professor Perry has many posts regarding the imbalance between private and public salaries. The government pays much better than the private sector in most areas.
Re:When a pool fails... (Score:3, Interesting)
This may be true where you live, but I've had quite good experience with building inspectors being thorough. Point being, it's true that merely getting a permit approved and the inspections completed is no guarantee that the building is safe, but it's an additional opportunity for someone to notice a mistake. And a builder who's expecting an inspection and who isn't naturally careful will be more careful in anticipation of the inspection.
E.g., I know of a building project in Oracle, Arizona, where the inspector noticed that the earth at the bottom of a foundation trench was not undisturbed earth, but merely earth that had been lying there for a long while, and insisted that the builder dig it out before building. A great deal of organic matter from an old, buried trash pile was found, and the trench was dug down to actual undisturbed earth. If this mistake hadn't been discovered, the cost for repairing the inevitable damage that would have occurred from settling would have been astronomical.
Re:They collected $75,000... (Score:4, Interesting)
A deed restriction tells you what kind of mailbox you need and what color to paint your front door, or in the past that colored people and china-men aren't allowed to inhabit the premises unless employed in domestic service. That last one's a direct quote from the deed to my grandfather's house.
It's city ordinances that tell you that you can't have a chicken coop in downtown St. Louis, and that you can't run a junkyard from the 1/8 acre behind your McMansion, and it always has been.
Deed restrictions don't say, "make sure you get a building permit before you build your deck, or your garage, or your pool." The reason we have building permits is so that urban Mr. Fix'it doesn't build a deck that collapses at a party injuring dozens, so that he doesn't build a garage that catches fire and spreads to the neighborhood, and so that the pool isn't a hole in the ground attached to a sensitive wetland into which Suzi Homeowner diligently dumps a 20lb bag of chlorine a week.
All that said, while having actual engineers sign off on actual building projects is a good idea (and don't kid yourself, that pool is a building project), this is a money grab, pure and simple.
Re:When a pool fails... (Score:5, Interesting)
Without knowing what went wrong, I'd wager the scenario could run like my what happened here a few years back...
A guy decided to put in a new driveway, and to keep it level carved away part of the foot of a hill. The hill started to slide a little bit, so he built his own six foot tall, thirty foot long retaining wall out of concrete blocks and without benefit of a permit or inspection. Problem was, not only did he not tie the courses together, he also didn't anchor the wall back into the hill, and he didn't provide drains behind the wall. All of which are required by code, should have been specified on the plans submitted for the permit he didn't have, approved by the county engineer as part of the approval process he didn't go through, certified as performed by the licensed contractor he didn't hire, and inspected by the county after completion...
Within a few weeks the county found out about this (I don't recall how) and yellow tagged the house. (Which means the house could not be occupied until the work noted on the tag, in this case replacing the wall, had been properly completed.) A few weeks later, in defiance of the yellow tag, the man moved back into the house because he "didn't want his family to spend Christmas in a hotel". Four days later, during a normal (for these parts) winter rainstorm, the weight of the hill and accumulated water collapsed the wall - and the ensuing mudslide wiped out the house and killed the man, his wife, and three of their children. The only survivor was a teen aged daughter who was at a friends Christmas party.
So the issue isn't that the water wouldn't have done as much damage when it collapsed, but that the odds are if the pool had been properly built it would have been less likely (much less likely) to collapse in the first place.
Not to mention, that most home insurance policies won't cover damages caused by un permitted construction. Nor are you left with any recourse - you'll be liable if you're party to a suit that arises subsequent to any damages caused by failures in such construction.