From: Steve Grammont (islander@midmaine.com)
Date: Fri Dec 12 2003 - 23:40:15 PST
Hi Bill,
>And I was the only person of
>the three people in public attendance who even cared enough to comment.
When you reread my previous email, think about these words you wrote.
It's the main problem with how the democratic process is going in the
developed nations. If you had been there with 40 or 50 well behaved
local voters, along with a member of the press, I think things would have
gone differently. As it was, your only chance was to have an ally on the
Council, prepped and ready before hand. I've seen this done before (we
have 7 selectmen in my town of 4000) and it can do wonders very quickly.
The problem here is that the rules they passed, like 'em or not, are
sensiable. As a taxpayer I know that the road budget for my town is
huge. I also know that the reason for this is primarily logging trucks.
I am also constantly amazed that we have only a few major accidents a
year (all of which are very messy, but thankfully not fatal usually),
considering the weight load, crappy roads, and drivers who go WAY too
fast for the conditions. I've also seen what happens when, in a tightly
packed quiet side street, some trucker decides to have his rig parked and
running for 8 hours straight. Diesel, noise, and a very real traffic
hazard. Cost, safety, and the right to peace and quiet (and clean air)
can all be very real issues for small towns like ours.
What I mean is that in order to fight something you have to first figure
out why and where it came from. Dismissing legislation like this as some
sort of Evil Plot to overthrow Good Citizen's rights is a fool's
approach. Instead looking deeper than one's own paranoia and knee jerk
reactions will help you find out how to work around the issues that
affect you. I'm glad to see you did just that.
Your suggestion for a Historic Vehicle exemption was a VERY good one.
Unfortunately, for whatever reason, you did not have the support
necessary to have it carried. Often times the council members do not
want to change the wording on the fly, so perhaps your chance to get
things changed had already passed.
As for the challenges made back at you, from my experience you are
correct to think of them as bunk. They are correct that a personal
exemption for you would be illegal. And it should be. However, local
government is allowed to discriminate if it doesn't violate base
constitutional rights, so long as it is applied broadly (this is why
towns can be free from strip bars, bars of any sort, pizza dellivery,
etc.). A personal example in my town is an exception to a Rural Zoning
for a "storage shack for a golf course". We only have one golf course in
town so we know who asked for the exemption and who benefited from it.
But if another golf course were to come in then they could get the same
exemption, but a non golf course could not. This is perfectly legal.
In short, they could have made an exemption for Historic Vehicles, but
for whatever reason (probably a combo of things) they were unwilling to
do so. This is not, however, the final word. You can petition the
Council to make an amendment, this time with support lined up ahead of
time. My advice is to find out who on the Council might support you,
locate other voters who will support you, and get someone in the local
media interested. State your case clearly and without casting ANY stones
upon the Council. Treat them with respect and give them plenty of ways
to save face. Cut off their path of retreat, and you can forget it. In
fact, you are likely to get more calls about various "possible"
violations. You can't cause half as much trouble for them as they can
cause for you, so don't try the brute force way.
Forcing you to part with property that you already own and are in
posession of would be quite difficult for them to do since they can not
make the vehicle itself illegal (that is for the Feds to decide). In
fact, you might be grandfathered to drive it since you owned the vehicle
prior to the adoption of the law, and at that time the use of it was
legal. Since losing the ability to drive it off your property would be
an obvious hardship, you might have some sort of case to make there.
Especially if such laws are not the norm for the area, state, or country.
Dunno, but a lawyer should.
Steve
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat May 07 2005 - 20:26:57 PDT