The Pit Bull Barked

The verdict is in. I’m not going to demolish my building. We met with the city codes enforcement gentleman today and discussed ways we can stay within the guidelines. The rules go like this..... the restoration of your damaged property can’t exceed 50% of the value of the property according to the tax assessment at the Court House. My property tax valuation was fairly low (a good thing when you pay property tax but a bad thing when you have a flood). The reason the property is valued on the low side is because my property is located on the “poor side of town”. I do believe Johnny Rivers recorded a song called “The Poor Side of Town”, but that is beside the point. Had my building been located anywhere else, the property value would probably have been considerably more than what was recorded at the Court House. So...the redo has got to be at bargain basement pricing. The problem lies with a building that is roughly 8,000 sq. ft. with lots of interior walls to be covered with dry wall and 3 HVAC units. Had my duct work not been in the ceiling, it would have been hard to come in under the 50% mark. Some of the rest of the rules go like this: say a tornado comes through here next year and blows the shingles off my roof..... then the cost of those repairs are added to create a cumulative total and when I hit the jackpot at 50% the value of my building, FEMA makes me destroy the building. To reiterate - I have not received any money or assistance of any type from FEMA. I’m wondering if we are already living in a nanny state. The whole ordeal made me want 2 slices of pie!
But instead of having the 2 slices of pie, I made a trip to Lowe’s and asked the manager to show me the cheapest piece of industrial tile they had in the building. Then I had the gall to ask them to call their warehouse and see if they had any overstocks in industrial tile that they could price even cheaper (I can live with any color, I think). Oh, and another FEMA rule that I didn’t know about - the repairs must be completed within 6 months. 3 months have passed already. I would have appreciated a little time to get back on my feet from the more urgent repairs we had to make to our Dist. Co., but the rules prevail. I ended my day out on the town by going to vote. All I can say is that my stance from now on will be “Less Government”! So help me, I pay my taxes and I really am a better judge of what is in my best interests than anyone from the government. FEMA may have been a blessing to some and I don’t begrudge it to those who need help, but they have been a curse rather than a blessing to me. And one last point before I give it a rest. This was called a 1,000 year flood. Now that is not to say that it couldn't happen again next year, but the likelihood of another flood like this would probably be way less than winning the lottery. By the way, if I win the lottery, Dyersburg gets a new library - on me!
I am not always a Pit Bull, so to prove it, I am going to take a much calmer tone now. The bright side of all of this is that I plan to have a wonderful classroom and a place to put the inventory I have. Then we can all get together and have a nice party. I’ll let you know when it is ready (probably in about 3 months).
The late afternoon light made me want to get out with that camera. I keep going back to the same places over and over again, but I promised myself that I wouldn’t make you look at pictures of Squirt or any of my flowers, so I drove out on one of my favorite old country lanes. The light was getting low but it was really golden. Hope you share the enjoyment I get from taking the pictures.


These are not tack sharp. I did not take the tripod and I still have problems with focus on wide angle shots, but I like the colors. There was very little editing done to any of these.
Oh, and I was supposed to find out how our librarian keeps up with all those crazy holidays. As you can tell, I’ve been sidetracked. But I will find out the answer this weekend. I have an all day workshop at the library on Saturday. We are kicking off that Capital Campaign on Monday. If anyone has a spare $1M lying around, we’ll name the library after you.