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Comment by IanCal | Hacker News Reader

> Hey, I mean this in as kind a way as possible, but I actually don’t think the government should pay for the fence line!

Which is a fine option, but it should be something agreed to by both parties. You can't just hand over a cost like that, and if you buy property with some kind of agreement this choice is baked into the original price. It makes perfect sense for the government to uphold agreements it has made.

Secondly - if they did own the fence line, it'd be on the government to come and fix it when one of their trees breaks it, surely?

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> It makes perfect sense for the government to uphold agreements it has made.

The key question is what is actually in the agreement. 'The state will maintain the fence' doesn't indicate the level of maintenance or the timeliness of said maintenance, it just means the neighbor isn't allowed to do it.

> Secondly - if they did own the fence line, it'd be on the government to come and fix it when one of their trees breaks it, surely?

From discussions I've seen, generally there's no legal responsibility for tree falls, unless there's neglegence like ignoring a clearly failing tree. But leaving a forest to do whatever the forest wants doesn't feel like neglegence.

Did the government agree to maintain a fence…?

If the government built a fence on their property, the burden is on them to maintain it. What other agreement is there?

Your position is that if the government builds a fence it is de facto obligated to maintain it to any abutting property owner's standards in perpetuity?

There is no agreement whatsoever, that's the point. No agreement was made or mentioned. The mere existence of a fence on government property does not constitute an agreement to maintain said fence.

I'm not stipulating anything about abutting property. I'm saying that if the government builds something on their land it is theirs to do with and is on them to maintain it. If they decide to no longer maintain it, that is also their decision. To clarify my point, if someone bought property when the government's fence was intact believing it will always remain so they did not have to build a fence, it is a bad decision on the neighbor's part and not the government's. If you require a fence, the only way to ensure you have a fence is to build and maintain your own fence. There are plenty of examples of the government building something on their land and then walking away and abandoning it when it is no longer needed.

Okay so I don't know why you're responding as if you're disagreeing with me.

We're on the same page.

>The mere existence of a fence on government property does not constitute an agreement to maintain said fence.

Can you imagine the sneering and hand wringing that would ensue in the comments if you tried to make such an argument about private property?

If a private landowner failed to maintain anything that was created by man (as opposed to nature) they'd say things like "public nuisance", "blighted", "antisocial" and all the other buzzword people of that bent love to use.

I don't really care what the standard is. If some standard is good enough to be worth legislating enforcing then it ought to apply equally to all land owners regardless of public or private.

There's plenty enough of unmaintained fences between rural properties in the middle of nowhere.

It seems like everyone here is literally conjuring up first an agreement, and now laws out of thin air. What law is the state exempting itself?

Anyway tree law is super, super well-established and it works the same way for private parties. Your neighbor's trees are none of your business until they are on your property, and then they're exclusively your business (except you can't structurally damage or kill the tree e.g. by cutting roots that cross onto your property).

You clearly have some strange bone to pick. You should pick it elsewhere.

Are you going to call the HOA on the government to enforce them to maintain their fence?

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