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Cedar Park Dad wrote:Some places do.

Zoning can however, turn into the ancillary funding program for local persons of interest instead of a tool of protection.

The Annoyed Man wrote:There's NIMBY, and then there's NIMBY. Let's look at concrete plants and shooting ranges.

One of our (gun owners) complaints is when people move into a area near an outdoor shooting range and then complain about the noise and safety concerns and try to get the range shut down. That's not a legitimate complaint. If you have noise and safety concerns, then don't buy your home next door to a source of those concerns!!!! The range was there first.....and that's an operating principle here. The home owner's private property rights end where they impact the range owner's rights.

Reverse the situation, and the right of the owner of a proposed range to build that range near a residential area ends where it begins to intrude on the rights of existing homeowners. This is common sense. Yes, the owner of a property has a right to develop his property, but his right to do so ends where it negatively impacts the quality of life and safety of existing residents. This is why we have zoning ordnances which disallow one property owner to put a strip club in the middle of a residential neighborhood.

Now, substitute "concrete plant" for "shooting range"..........

Does NIMBY get carried too far sometimes, lending an air of illegitimacy to the complainers? Yes. But sometimes it is a perfectly legitimate exercise of a property owner's rights. If my property was worth X $$ when I bought it, and the current market says that it should now be worth X+Y $$, but another property owner moves in after the fact and builds a cement plant that reduces my property's value to X-Y $$, then as far as I am concerned, the new property owner owes me Y$$ x2 for loss of value to my property which is HIS fault, plus real estate sale costs and moving expenses so that I don't have to continue to live in a deteriorating neighborhood which was just fine before he moved his concrete plant into it.

You can't always avoid progress, nor necessarily should you. But progress for the new concrete plant owner doesn't equate to progress for the residents who are being negatively impacted by the new neighbor, and the original residents' concerns must be addressed to their satisfaction. That's not just NIMBY, it's fair play.