Thanks again to everyone who shared their thoughts! After a long talk with our builder (who's walked the property with us -- after a week of rain!), we've decided we're probably going to go with this lot. The builder felt that the low spot is far enough away from the house that it will be a nonissue. Further, he suspects that the reason this guy dug the trench was to make it easier for him to mow his lawn -- to channel the water into one area rather than have it spread across a wider area of lawn. As the builder pointed out, he's uphill from us anyway ... the water was -already- going to end up on "our" property. It's just doing so in a more concentrated area now. I said, "So if we told you that we bought this lot and decided not to deal with the trench, would you think we were crazy?" He said, "Not at all -- if I were buying it, I wouldn't worry about it, either." In the minutes I found from the board meetings, the neighbor's anger issues apparently stemmed from him being asked to do some things he felt were unsafe. (At his jobs, not at the meeting -- the behavior was just discussed at the meetings.) Of course, there are two sides to every story, and we're unlikely to ever know the whole story, but I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. So, pretty much the only thing we have left to resolve is the fact that this area has a drain assessment coming up. (My ex-boyfriend is a county commissioner and tipped me off about that!) We need to figure out the amount of the assessment and who's going to be paying for it -- the current owner may already be on the hook for it, which would obviously change our offer somewhat.

E, I do not want to puncture your "feel good" position, but if I wanted to I could easily at a minimum shake the foundation of it. I just share that I have multiple CU and bank accounts available to me on line, and have never lost a moment of sleep. As long as the customer monitors the account(s) , accepts the customer safeguards offered, stays current on phishing and financial scams, and subscribes to the alerts offered by the financial institutions on-line is just fine. The Federal umbrella liability is $50.00 per account. State and institutional liability policies vary below that figure with most being zero. BTW: FF v24 came through the FF updater this morning. Thunderbird e-mail client v24.0 update too. DA This post was edited by damccoy on Tue, Sep 17, 13 at 13:53

bud, in my area farmland was never well regulated. as a matter of a fact just now in the last month was zoning ordinaces put into effect outside incorporated areas of the county. years ago farmers had tanks in the ground for most everything. many of these were forgotten over the years and later on someone bought the land and discovered them. hard for people to do something about a tank that had been there 75+years, and the land had changed hands numerous times, with the original owners dead and gone. the city has had several annexations in the last couple decades, and everytime they have people bought old farm land and started putting up houses. then they find the stuff tha thas been in the ground for decades and want to go after the previous owner. but so far there has not been a single successful lawsuit, but ONLY because it could be proven the stuff was there long before they ever bought the land. for the last decade or longer, the EPA has required that the farmers fuel tanks be above ground, with a system around the tank to catch any spilled fuel. as far as i know, the farm chemicals are still NOT regulated in this manner. i hate to say it, but the lack of information available to you from teh city is probably not that they are holding back, they just do not know and hav eno way of knowing.

Sounds vaguely familiar but Google isn't jogging my memory.   Personally, I prefer my visited links remain green. (Just a personal preference) Something about "maintaining order" or something.  I just saw that some folks were bothered by visited links failing to change color and since I knew how to fix it, I posted a "workaround" in case it helped anyone.  To me I think it's not so much a "workaround". It's just taking control of what/how/if things are displayed on MY screen. :-)