Friday, Aug. 01, 2008

Letter: County is no cheaper

I would like to comment on the article in Friday's paper about the town hall meeting that a lot of us did not know about. Mayor Jones said, "We don't have any control of what codes they build the houses to, plus don't have control of the fees they charge." This was about the Santa Nella project. Sorry to say, but I just built a home last year on the west side of town in the county. The building code for Merced County is the same as Los Baños. The home cost me the same amount of money with the same codes. The only difference being I did not have to hook up to city water, sewer or garbage, but I still had to pay the school tax that is set by the school district. I wish it was the $3,000 the mayor said. The school tax is calculated by your home's square footage and not by where it is built. When I pulled permits in September 2006 the school tax was more than $13,000. I was the owner of the building and not a contractor. If I had waited to pay it at the start of construction in February 2007 it was going to cost an additional $6,000. The disturbing thing was that the majority of the crew was not local. The framers were from Fresno and Madera, stucco crew from Atwater, plumbing Dos Palos, concrete Chowchilla. Nobody was local so how much of the payroll was spent in Los Baños? I wonder how many people pounding nails in Los Baños now spend their money here?

I do not understand the comment about being able to build a lot cheaper out of town with no codes. Someone is being misinformed. Also if you get annexed into the city you better sell all your toys. The boat, RV, ATV, and the trailer you haul them on because the city will not allow you to park them on your property. If your children join the 4H or FFA they will not be allowed to keep any kind of animals at home. That includes no rabbits, chickens, ducks, and so on. The contractor can also build with zero clearance, which means he can stack the houses one on top of the other. Is that what you want to see when you drive down Pioneer Road? The county will not allow lots any smaller than 20 acres. That is what I would rather look at than what they are doing in Newman on the east side of town on River Road. You can walk on the rooftops from house to house. We need to stop new housing projects. There are so many empty and in foreclosure now. We even have projects not even half finished and wanting to annex more farm land. We need to start going to the meetings and let them know we like our small farming community and would like to preserve our farm land for generations to come.

As for the annexation line on Pioneer being one-fourth mile south of the road I find it unacceptable. Pioneer should be our southern-most boundary between city and county. I am not positive, but I think Pioneer Road on the west of Ortigalita is the southernmost line. If this is so, then the Local Agency Formation Commission should honor that all the way east. At the planning commission meeting on July 23, Mr. Hostetler wanted me to believe that it would be a burden on Ranchwood to have the annexation line moved back up to Pioneer. I thought that the annexation plan still had not yet been approved so it still could be changed. Mr. Hostetler stated that he is still farming, so how would it be an imposition if he had to continue farming the property south of Pioneer being he already owns all of it?

Thank you for allowing my opinion.

Abel Gomes

Los Baños