This is not an April Fool’s story.
Short version of a long story like you get at the beginning of the second half of a two part televisor show:

1. In the course of converting our property back to a non-commercial residence we fenced off the driveway/road thingy that allowed people to get to where a building had been before the conversion. -Does that make sense?
2. Anyway, our neighbor goes to the City Council meeting every Monday night for months and begs them to sue us. The City Council, in a move really without precedent or reason, sues us for $20,000.00 and our driveway. -Well, the reason was, I suppose, to frighten us into begging them to just take it and let us live.
3. Finally, the city gets a lawyer who has done this sort of thing and condemns and buys from our mortgage company a bit of our property to open as a public roadway. -This is the way normal cities do this kind of thing all the time and there’s nothing I can really do about it. I contend that there’s no reason for them to waste more tax money on my driveway, but my voice goes unheard.
4. Our agreement with the city is that they bought .07 acre from us at a price they felt was reasonable and they gave us a letter relinquishing any claims they might have on the rest of our property and agreed to build a new fence along the line adjacent to the property they bought. The Mayor made a point that they would use the gates they were tearing down as part of the new fence, thus saving several dollars in fencing materials. In the meeting with the City’s attorney he made some notations on a plat that we would stake out where we wanted the gates to go and on that same plat he wrote out and made an arrow to the pin where the fence would end on the south end.

Okay, I think we’re caught up now, except for this little footnote: The pin that demarks the south end of the line between what they bought and what they left is nearly into the intersection of what used to be our driveway and the roadway behind our house and, needless to say, will not make travel on either of these two roads convenient.
The location of this pin, installed in the roadway during a survey made by the city, was no secret. I mentioned, when making my arguments against the city taking this action, that this wasn’t going to help anyone. I pointed out to the city’s attorney that this arrangement was going to make it very difficult for poor Miss Bryson to get into her driveway, but I was pooh-poohed at every turn.
I mentioned that the city cheaped out even though they got to pick their own low, low price and bought the bare minimum of our land. This is going to result in a very thin roadway and the only way we’re ever going to be able to get heavy equipment into the yard (for, perhaps, building a brand-new shop!) is to put the gates at the extreme south end of the new fence. So Mrs. Bumper takes a bit of red paint and delineates where the gates should go.
So, suddenly, a little paint on the ground where the city made us move our property line had caused a minor uproar. Councilman McLeod is, I guess, their liaison to us because we’ve known him a long time. He came to see us twice yesterday and the Mayor stopped by once. The Mayor didn’t stay very long, just long enough to say that the pin was in the wrong place and someone other than the surveyors must have placed it there. I opined that it might have been rogue stake fairies and he left in a huff. McLeod said that they really thought I would just want to move my property line in a little on my own, after all, that’s what good neighbors would do. I pointed out the 30 feet I had left when I got to decide where my property line was and accused his city council buddies of being ghouls for putting a fencepost right behind Poor Miss Bryson’s garage. “What are they trying to do, lock her in? That’s crazy! But I already told you guys that, I guess you know what you’re doing.”
I’m interested to see what they do next, but after they served papers on my wife and me, caused my poor saint-of-a-granny to lose precious sleep for a year and my dad to nearly go homicidal. I don’t really feel so full of gratitude that I really want to give them some more of my property just so they can look good. No matter how close it is to the election.