Federal court says Florida city can take man's house for tall grass fines | Hacker News Reader

Federal court says Florida city can take man's house for tall grass fines

tampabay.com

22 pointsWarOnPrivacy15 comments

Two things:

- I imagine people justify this by telling themselves 'rules are rules', but anyone who tries to destroy someone else's life because of grass is a loser.

- I wish it was acceptable to let grass grow taller. Makes me feel like I'm living closer to nature. (Also, mowers need to be electric or have catalytic converters. Such pointless polluters otherwise.)

> $30,000 in code violation fines

This is already clearly ridiculous.

> for an overgrown lawn.

Only in the land of the free.

I suppose statistically in over 300 million people you would find a ridiculous city run by just sufficiently ridiculous people who do something that ridiculous.

I wonder if the Federal court considered Timbs v. Indiana? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbs_v._Indiana

Not quite the same situation, but SCOTUS unanimously came down very strongly against "excessive fines".

Why do people care if grass is tall? lawns were invented by rich French nobility to show off how they could afford to have nothingness gardens instead of productive farm land.

Ticks, rodents

Stay off their lawn, then? (Also, tall grass doesn’t really attract rodents. It just gives them a place to hide. Food in uncovered garbage is a much bigger issue.)

Because that's still their function. Just try growing food crops on your lawn! And "low status" neighbors makes a "low status" neighborhood makes you "low status".

Also prohibited: washing lines. What, you can't afford to inflate your carbon footprint with a dryer on this beautiful sunny day? What are you, poor?

Though its not crime where I live. But if it was, muncipal officer will give us two-three warning and later come with a team of worker, cut the grass and fine user with penalty + cost of cutting + additional panalty. Repeated violation will may lead sealing og property until the court hearing or a former apology.

Still it will never exceed $1k.

People don't bat an eye at property taxes taking people's homes, why would grass be different.

$500 per day is an obscene amount of fine to levy over grass.

"You will pay 200% your monthly property tax for each day your grass is tall" is indeed ridiculous

Agreed. Better option would be to hire someone to cut the grass and bill the property owner for it.

That makes so much sense. Which is how I know they'll never implement anything like that :(

That's how we do it in most cities in WI. Except the city gives you a written warning by mail. If you don't do it, they just charge you some flat fee to have a city worker do it. It's expensive, but nowhere near that ludicrous.

Or... just ignore it? It's grass, not toxic waste.

Even better, subsidize it; it's valuable habitat for all kinds of species threatened by human activity.

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