Free Talk Live

Don’t mess with your neighbor’s lawn — especially if that neighbor is the city of Columbus. Property owners along Columbus’ three reservoirs — Griggs, O’Shaughnessy and Hoover — are being taken to court for mowing, weeding and otherwise sprucing up waterfront property owned by the city that abuts their backyards.

MCLOUD, OK -- Several residents in McLoud are upset after the city announced a $17 water bill for residents who use a well. According to City Manager Larry Dillon, the small fee will help pay for emergency services such as police officers and fire fighters. Because of an old city ordinance, rural residents with in 100-yards of a water line didn't have to pay for those services; but because of a struggling economy, every dollar counts.

"nstead of declaring bankruptcy, Maywood officials decided to outsource all city functions. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department will patrol the streets, while the neighboring city of Bell will cover other city functions, such as staffing City Hall.

Maywood already relies on contract workers and outsources many city services. The director of parks and recreation, for instance, is a contractor, and the city's lights, landscaping and street sweeping are handled by private companies. Los Angeles County maintains the library and fire department."

Their front yard was torn up after replacing a sewer line, so instead of replacing the dirt with grass, one Oak Park woman put in a vegetable garden and now the city is seeing green.

The city then sent out code enforcement.

City code says that all unpaved portions of the site shall be planted with grass or ground cover or shrubbery or other suitable live plant material. Tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers are what Basses see as suitable.

Despite protests from dozens of residents, Santa Clarita is poised to join a growing movement of budget-strapped communities that are turning over their libraries to private management.

The move, approved by the City Council in a 4-1 vote last week, was designed to save the city hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars by withdrawing its three libraries from the county system. But it left some residents fretting about a loss of service without access to the county's vast resources.

Gardeners aren’t generally known for their civil disobedience, yet in the last couple of years several have run afoul of local officials for tending vegetables in their front yards. In Ferguson, Mo., a stay-at-home father was ordered to dig up his 55 varieties of edible plants. In Tulsa, Okla., a gardener who didn’t want to remove her veggies and medicinal herbs saw them largely cleared by the city.

The latest on the Southern California City of Bell probably won't surprise anyone. "The scandal-plagued city of Bell mismanaged more than $50 million in bond money, levied illegal taxes and paid exorbitant salaries to its leaders, according to a state audit released Wednesday..."

On August 23, 2010 Liberty activists from the Orlando area gathered in front of Orlando City Hall to intentionally violate a City Ordinance banning "Group Feeding" (25 or more persons) within a 2 mile radius of city hall.. All local media was alerted prior to our demonstration and City Hall members were even invited to join us.

We violated this law and were able to feed over 100 homeless people without any confrontations with local law enforcement. We hope to continue this trend and explore the freedom of assembly by applying the same tactic to Public Assembly Ordinances.

An Orlando man is fighting city officials to keep his vegetable garden in his front yard. You have to step over radishes, wax beans and kale to get to Jason Helvingston's front door in College Park. However, his 25 x 25 foot micro-irrigated vegetable garden is against city code, and the city of Orlando has asked Helvingston to dig it up by Wednesday.