Condemnation of property gets the blood pumping. The signs posted on this dilapidated trailer by the City of Branson indicate that it is “condemned,” but most of us don’t understand exactly what this means.
Condemnation has two meanings for local governments and property owners: Read the rest of this entry
Today, I’ll travel to Jefferson City to testify before a Senate committee in favor of the Uniform Planned Communities Act, which is Senate Bill 230, sponsored by Sen. Joan Bray.
I have testified in support of the UPCA at two or three times previously. I’m not a lobbyist, and I testify for myself at my own expense, taking off work to do so. Here’s why: Read the rest of this entry
The filming of Daniel Woodrell‘s novel “Winter’s Bone” at various locations in the Forsyth area will conclude next week. The story of the novel and movie concerns an Ozarks family affected by meth and violence. The silver lining to this depiction is that the process of making a movie puts cash from elsewhere into the local economy. This time of year, especially, that seems to be a good thing, since local unemployment is in double digits.
Jerry, Raeanne and Andrea
I was invited to lunch yesterday by Jerry Jones, director of the Missouri Film Commission, who was making a visit to the set. I dined at Cantina Laredo with Jerry, his wife Pam (who is my friend from college days), Branson mayor Raeanne Presley, Steve Olson of Springfield, Bill Lennon of Branson, and Andrea Sporcic, assistant director of the Film Commission.
When Mayor Presley was on the Missouri Tourism Commission, she became acquainted with the work of the Missouri Film Commission, whose effectiveness in recruiting film productions to Missouri depends on Missouri’s film tax credit program, which provides an incentive for filmmakers to come to Missouri in the form of state tax credits for those film productions that spend a substantial amount of money in the state.
The production company has been lodged at Branson Landing, with a production office at the Branson Landing Convention Center. The company has hired extras locally and at least one local has a speaking part. Read the rest of this entry
Ken Kline, chair of the Taney County (Missouri) Industrial Development Authority (IDA), persuaded the Taney County Commission yesterday to fund an Office of Economic Development, so that Taney County will have people actively pursuing money dedicated to rural projects in the stimulus package pushed through Congress by the Obama Administration.
Ken’s presentation was well-organized, with detailed descriptions of the duties of the persons that he wanted the county to hire. The request suggested that these county employees report to the IDA, which consists of unpaid appointees.
I spoke in support of Ken’s proposal and pointed out that many of the functions of the proposed Office of Economic Development were within the statutory duties of the county’s planning commission, but were not currently being performed.
Sarah Klinefelter, chair of the planning commission, agreed that the planning commission had been primarily responding to requests for zoning permits, rather than performing its planning function. New county commissioner Jim Strafuss told me after the meeting that the county commission had issued an RFP for a comprehensive plan.
I hope that rural counties in the Ozarks will take advantage of the opportunity to upgrade roads and bridges, water and sewer facilities, school buildings, and parks and to establish technology facilities. Otherwise, we’ll be faced with doing our part to pay for improvements made elsewhere, putting us even further behind.
Suppose you are buying a home in a subdivision. You don’t see many occupied houses in the subdivision, which is not in a city or town. But you see a water wellhouse and storage tank and maybe an odd looking structure that must be a sewer treatment plant or pumping station. You don’t see any signs indicating that these belong to a local government entity. You wonder who maintains the streets, the water system and the sewer system. The answer is that a homeowners’ association (HOA) is responsible for maintenance and operation of these essential facilities.
But where is the HOA? You can’t find it in the phone book or on the internet. The public records are sketchy. Read the rest of this entry
When I think of growing things, I think of Jim Long, whose writings I’ve enjoyed reading and learning from for many years. Jim is well-known all over the United States for his knowledge about growing things, and he writes and lectures all over the place. Jim is an expert on growing herbs, flowers and vegetables in the Ozarks. Unlike most of the rest of us, he paid attention to his elders about such things, and he studied and experimented on his own.
Jim and Josh Young live at Long Creek Herb Farm, near Long Creek and the Arkansas-Missouri line outside Oak Grove, Arkansas, south of Table Rock Lake and Branson. Their website contains a wealth of information about gardening in the Ozarks, and how to purchase Josh’s interesting and funny book “Missouri Curiosities,” and the various other products that they sell. Despite the tremendous knowledge that they have, Jim and Josh are anything but snobs about gardening, food or anything else.
Jim has asked me if I know people in the area (Taney and Stone counties of Missouri; Carroll and Boone counties of Arkansas) who are interested in the slow food movement, which is partly a reaction to fast-food, but more a recognition of the basic need to eat well. If you are interested, please contact Jim through his website.
Many community leaders are jealous of the sales tax revenue and economic activity generated by tourism. They wish that their own communities had some of what Branson and other tourist towns have (the municipal revenue, the perceived business opportunities, and options for shopping, dining, entertainment and outdoor activities), but not the other stuff (the seasonal economy, the high percentage of residents who move in and move out, the number of business failures, the constant need to expand schools, the high sales taxes, the traffic snarls, the disorder of constant construction projects, etc.). Read the rest of this entry
Congress is going to do something. The House has approved a stimulus package, full of all kinds of goodies–only a few months after “earmarks” was a dirty, dirty word. And the Senate will put a few more pork cutlets into the package.
IRONY ALERT: THIS BLOG POST IS NOT ENTIRELY SERIOUS! PARTS OF IT ARE! WATCH FOR HINTS.
But what do we need in the Ozarks?
Whatever we don’t get here will go somewhere else. No matter how ineffective cash infusions are when injected elsewhere, we’d like it to have it go to waste in the Ozarks, where we know how to spend wisely because we’re not liberals mostly.
We might as well make a list Read the rest of this entry
Outside of incorporated cities in the Ozarks, the homeowner association (HOA) is often the government for homes in subdivisions and condominiums. The clean water rules enforced by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources include HOAs as eligible “continuing authorities” to own and operate drinking water or sewer facilities, or both, in subdivisions not served by public utility companies regulated by the Public Service Commission or by governmental providers. In addition, the HOAs often have the responsibility of maintaining subdivision streets unless and until the county commission adopts an ordinance to maintain the streets.
HOAs are ordinarily established by the subdivision developer, in order to obtain permits for sewer or water facilities and to create an entity for road maintenance. An HOA’s power to collect assessments from lot owners (or unit owners, in the case of condominiums) is established by the recording of subdivision covenants (usually called CCRs or a declaration). The HOA is almost always set up as a non-profit corporation, with the developer and the developer’s associates making up the initial board of directors.
Even under the best of circumstances, the developer fails to file annual reports for the HOA with the Missouri Secretary of State, and the HOA, as a corporation, is administratively dissolved. When few lots are sold, that also happens. And there are worse omissions and consequences: Read the rest of this entry
The success of the book Overlawyered, and the popular website that followed, is based on the conventional wisdom that the quality of modern American life has been significantly lowered–and the costs of health care tremendously inflated–by the proliferation of junk lawsuits and regulations that don’t accomplish their goals and cost way too much. Finding stories to support these claims is really easy. But those tales should not keep an individual from getting good legal help when needed.
I’m astounded by the underlawyering that I encounter. It takes two forms: Read the rest of this entry
Ozarks Law & Economy 