When you want to make a major improvement to your property, it is often necessary to go to the county and get permission.

While that can certainly be frustrating, it would be even worse if they demanded that you give up a portion of your property so they could build a new road before they would approve your request.

That is what happened to the land owner in this story, but over the course of a few years, he got his revenge.

Check it out.

County ‘forced’ me to give them 15′ of my property along the street.

I’ve lived at this place for 20 years and decided it was time to build a new home.

Had the plans drawn up and trotted down to the planning department to get the building permit.

When they were approved I returned to pay the plan check fees.

Then I was informed that the county planned to widen the road in front of the house as part of a plan to extend the road to a main artery to the north.

They wanted me to ‘give’ them 15′ along the 250′ frontage of my property before they would issue the permit.

That is a lot of property.

They knew they had me over a barrel, so I agreed.

But wait, there’s more.

I had to pay the fees to make the transfer to the county.

I left with my approved plans and 15′ X 250′ less property and clearly angry.

I would have been angry as well.

A year passed, the house got built and we moved in.

But I was still mad so I came up with the ‘get even’ plan.

The area is relatively flat, and drainage is needed to drain excess water on the rare occasions that we get above average rainfall.

There’s a 125′ open drainage ditch along the road that feeds into 125′ of buried drainage pipe, basically the whole 250′ frontage.

I contacted the county and told them that ‘their’ drainage ditch was clogged with debris and needed to be cleaned out before the rainy season.

They agreed to send a crew.

Hey – The city wanted the property, it is their problem.

Then I told them that ‘their’ drainage pipe was also clogged and needed to be cleaned out.

Again, they said they’d take care of it.

To their credit, the county road crew showed up with backhoe, dump truck and the crew.

The ditch was pretty straightforward and soon was cleaned up.

But the foreman took one look at the pipe and said it was too far gone and would have to be replaced.

I bet it cost the city tens of thousands.

Gee, owning property can be expensive.

So they dug it all up, including 2 driveways, installed 125′ of 18″ corrugated drain pipe, and replaced 2 driveways.

I thanked them for being good ‘neighbors’, taking good care of ‘their’ property.

The whole project lasted a week, so the cost was not insignificant.

Another year goes by and I get a letter from the county.

Wow, that worked out perfectly.

They’ve changed their mind and won’t be extending the road after all and want to give me my property back.

Of course, I would have to pay all of the fees -again.

Oh well, I did get a new drain line and newly paved driveways out of the deal.

Now that is some good luck!

Let’s look at the comments and see what other people had to say.

Here is someone who says this type of thing is common in rural areas.

The guy clearly didn’t understand the law.

This person questions whether this story is real.

Here is someone who says they should have called an attorney.

This person says it was illegal for the county to do that.

This guy got ripped off, but it worked out in the end.

So I guess all’s well that ends well.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.