coming changes

About ten years ago, a small section of the farm that bordered our property was sold to the Wake County School System. We've known since then that both an elementary school and a middle school were going to be our neighbors. We also knew that when that happened, this view would change:

I know nostalgic people think I'm crazy, but I'm not an overly huge fan of living on a dirt road. The state does "maintain" the road, meaning that when the potholes and washboard effect get too bad they scrape it (and almost always cut our phone line) and add new gravel (which teenagers drive through super fast and sling everywhere). But that is not all that often. And we don't get a whole lot of rain, which means we have an incredible amount of dust. Sometimes in the summer it seems to just hang in the air. So I always thought I'd be glad when the road became paved.

But then ten years passed, and the layout of the school property changed, as well as requests from the town of Garner for the property. The long and short of it is that there will now be a town walking path that is right on the border of our property (and we have a pond), and immediately next to it is the school driveway. And the school wants a turn lane. So we were QUITE shocked two weeks ago when surveyors showed up in our yard, unannounced (by law you're supposed to have a 30 day notice), and started putting stakes around our 20 year old oak tree (in the picture below), our well, and in the opposite corner of our yard from the school property, all the way down into 1/3 of our yard. The stake they placed in the middle of our driveway I promptly removed.

We have yet to receive an explanation on any of the stakes from the BOE or DOT, no one will answer any of our questions, and their promised "we'll contact you next week" has now gone two weeks without happening. So we don't know if the paving of the road will require the removal of four trees, a huge section of our yard, relocating the dog's underground fence and our well, or not. I know that the person we've dealt with over the years left her job sometime in May. I don't know if the person who replaced her is overwhelmed in the new position, or simply inconsiderate and incompetent. But one of our neighbors is being treated even worse. And it makes me angry. Eminent domain is one thing, but this taking this much is arrogant and unnecessary.