Dear Editor;
I apologize for the rant! Who is running Flagstaff County? We elect county councillors to represent us but they don’t seem to have the power to do anything. The public was invited to have coffee with our councillors, we went and chatted with a councillor, then went to chat with our councillor, and we’re later accused of monopolizing all of his time, we were actually joined by other residents so it wasn’t all about us.
We have been having nothing but trouble with this county over an undeveloped road allowance bordering a quarter of our land. One neighbour complained that he wanted to drive a half-mile down this undeveloped road allowance; we tried to get someone from the county to come and talk to us about this request at the site but nobody was willing to listen to our side of the issue, we tried to get staff and/or council, nobody would meet with us.
Instead of coming to talk with us in a civilized manner, they took us to court to demand that we seed grass seed on this undeveloped road allowance and tried to file an injunction against us to remove a gate. We went to court, the judge denied the injunction when we told him that we did not own the gate, nor did we pay someone to install the gate, truth be told, the gate was installed by the complainants farm!
Here’s where it gets interesting, the staff at the County claims that for continuity, all road allowance’s should be to the east of the original survey stake, so they marked out 66 feet to the east of the stake. Just 1 mile south of this is a developed road allowance west of the survey stake. It is not a correction road but it is a County road!
Now on this problem road of ours, half of the 66 feet is bush. Before we went to court, I phoned the County Reeve and asked him to sit down with us to discuss a solution; he informed me that it would be a waste of his time.
Off to court we went, injunction thrown out-County to pay court costs. Well, we seeded the grass as the court ordered and were ordered by the County to remove the gate – we left the gate up as the injunction was lifted and it was within the allowed guidelines of a gate, one that can be opened to allow access – the same as many other gates throughout this county.
Once again the gate was removed and disposed of by the county. As far as we know this is the only gate they have removed or ordered removed.
When we purchased this land over 50 years ago, we paid for it from pin to pin, paid taxes on the full 160 acres for over 50 years. Now this young neighbour thinks he must drive down this undeveloped road allowance when he could just as easily drive through his own field to access his next piece of land as he has been doing for over five years.
Thanks to this County, we are two senior citizens who feel we have a target on our backs, would not recommend any senior citizens to move to this County!
Barry and Lana Love
Hardisty