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Wendy and Phil Durocher took their seats in a dim conference room in the annals of the Pinellas County courthouse and got ready to plead their case. They came armed with a binder of receipts, itemized spreadsheets and photographs of their storm-damaged mobile home, meticulously highlighted and annotated.
After months of agonizing, a county magistrate would soon decide whether the Durochers would be allowed to keep their Palm Harbor home, deemed “substantially damaged” from flooding during Hurricane Helene.
Unless the Durochers could prove the county’s building department had miscalculated, their home would have to be torn down or...
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Ronald Reagan summed it up when he said “the most dangerous nine words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help”.