Hello!
My family has owned a horseranch/farm in the state of Nevada since the mid-late 1970s.
Recently, a renter/client of ours (who had been storing his chickens here) was arrested on the property. Since that time (ye about three weeks ago), we've had the health and building departments come to inspect our property.
A general rundown of the property is as follows:
We have two houses, a large garage, and a long horsebarn. These have been here since the 1970s/1980s. When we first bought the property, the land was officially considered 'rural/agricultural' by the county. We've had inspections before, and nothing about these buildings has come under any scrutiny.
In addition to these original structures, our clients over the years have constructed various chicken coops/horse shelters. These have existed in some cases upwards of a decade. They've been scrutinized somewhat, but never was any alarm sounded by the county.
Now, the health/building departments have inspected and have told us that many of these structures are 'unsafe', 'not up to code', et cetera, and thus must be removed. They've also told us that our compost heaps, which have always existed here, are also 'illegal'.
However, if one looks into the county's varied statutes regarding the differences between residential and agricultural property, everything on our property is perfectly acceptable. Legally, as a farm, all of our buildings and activities are fine. They've no ability to tell us what to do.
When we've had our personal lawyer inform the health/building departments of this, complete with copies of said statutes, they've demanded that we somehow prove our being a 'farm'.
What we (our farm) think is happening, is that the health and building departments perceive us as being a residential property that's run amok, whereas in reality the surrounding area (residential, not a part of our property) has slowly grown up around us. We've always been here, and the neighborhood has engulfed us.
As an anecdote, animal control officers once came to our farm because somebody had reported an injured horse. They looked around, and said they couldn't/wouldn't do anything about it because not only was the given animal being properly cared for, but that we were beholden to the Nevada Department of Agriculture. Days later, a law enforcement officer from the Department of Agriculture arrived and spoke with us. We showed him around, and he told us everything looked great and drove off.
To us, that suggests that we're considered to be both agricultural in nature, and a decently managed farm by extension. The law here in Nevada states that all that's necessary to be considered agricultural is that we maintain livestock (in our case, horses and chickens), to say nothing of our other farmlike activities.
What we keep running into, is our clients and friends insisting that we ought to be considered 'grandfathered in' (I know that's not a legal term, I'm hoping there's such a/similar concept, however).
The land was listed as agricultural/rural at it's inception, has never not been used/maintained as a farm/ranch, and when previously scrutinized we were told we were beholden to the Agricultural Department.
What on Earth do we do? Who do we contact?
Please, and thank you, for any and all advice.
Written By: MikeyMasterson
Source: http://bit.ly/2GCxl0G
No comments:
Post a Comment