You know, for the past 26 years that we lived here; we have never had an issue with the city when it came to yard maintenance (unless if the weeds got too extreme). Now for the past 3 months they have started to act like an HOA. One of my neighbors got told that he needed to fix up his yard and had to move his broken car that his been working on. A simple cover won’t work apparently so he haz to put it on the side of his house behind a covered fence.
Another neighbor of ours was told they cannot park their car by their front door. The reason why they park it there is because the guy who lives there has back problems and has a hard time walking to his car from the front door.
I don’t get it; we don’t live in an HOA. Each house in our neighborhood is very different; we have different color houses and they each look unique and not cookie cutter. I am just waiting for them to tell us that we need to paint our house the same, move our trailer to some storage unit or tell us we cannot park our cars in the street. Not sure what to do.
Edit: Also some city worker constantly patrols our neighborhood and will sometimes park and wait a while. I once saw him fix our untouched fire hydrate in front of our house, never seen that happen.
Why don’t you ask them? There’s the mayor, city council, zoning commission, and probably a few other departments that deal with housing. Find your city’s municipal site, figure out which departments might have something to do with this, and start calling.
Once you know what’s going on and why, you can start planning on what, if anything, to do. Y’all might need a lawyer, or you might need to run for office.
We are thinking of doing something if this crap doesn’t stop. What we have noticed that our Hispanic neighbors weren’t told to move their car that is beside their front door. Now why would they tell one neighbor to move his car by his front yard and not the other? This just doesn’t make sense.
Sometimes city workers are responding to complaints. It could be as simple as one person was complained about and another wasn’t. Or one person’s “by the front door” violates the municipal code and the other person’s doesn’t. You may want to check the municipal code to see what else they might be looking for. That kind of thing is boring, though, so you may want to save it for sometime when you’re having trouble getting to sleep.
As to why now, maybe someone new got hired and they’re looking to prove their effectiveness. Or maybe things in the general area have been slowly deteriorating (entropy’s a bitch) and someone is fed up and wants to see some improvements. Could even be that someone has discovered the online complaint form (assuming your area has one) and is having fun. Or someone retired and they’re stuck seeing the neighborhood all day. Or maybe it just took 26 years for your neighborhood to be focused on and in a few months the focus will shift to the next neighborhood.
The two items you mention are both kind of standard and both car related. There could be a sweep of car-related violations.
If it’s really causing him trouble, the guy with the back problems might try requesting an ADA accommodation. Does he have a handicap placard?
Just out of curiosity, you said someone had fixed a fire hydrant. Had it been leaking or something? Here’s hoping the worst is over.
You don’t really want to sue your city, or even try it. Especially if they are merely acting on ordinances already on the books, you’re not going to win and you’re going to waste money.
Talking to people is the place to start. The city is just run by people. Definitely reach out to your city council.
Actually I just went to a Seminar For New Council Members put on by the Ohio Municipal League, specifically the lawyers who represent cities and there was a whole section on how we shouldn’t worry, it’s really hard to sue a city, city council members, city workers, etc. Don’t do it, don’t try it, don’t bother. They really emphasized that (in a slightly slimy, cackling way, to be honest. But still, it made me feel good they’re on our side…)
But really, even if I hadn’t heard that from The Lawyers last weekend, I still say “get a lawyer” is absolutely not a place to start for anyone dealing with city codes and stuff. Always start with city council! They get paid to listen to ya!
If that doesn’t get anywhere, and they’re really being unreasonable and arbitrary, it can sometimes work to get the local government reporter from the local news channel on the case. Local news loves to beat up these sort of “city council picks on the little guy” stories.
It would be interesting to know what city the OP is in. Then we could actually look up the municipal code and see what the official rules are.
I don’t understand what you’re getting at.
Just as I don’t know what, if anything, T-minus is implying by specifying that his unharassed neighbour is Hispanic.
Hence my asking if that is in any way relevant to his situation.
What would even be the “reverse” of that?
What is the reverse of** T-minus** specifying his neighbour’s ethnicity?
What is the reverse of only his Hispanic neighbour being unharrassed?
What is the reverse of Hispanic?
Do you mean “would it matter if the situation were reversed and it were *only *his Hispanic neighbor being harassed by the city”?
If so, I dunno. I don’t live in the same neighbourhood. (For starters, mine has too many goddamn “u”s in it.)
See **Telemark’s **comment.
Some municipalities are like that, and the ones that are probably get more applause than complaints from the denizens (or the politically connected and financially contributing ones at any rate).
We have had tickets attached to our door twice and an actual court summons once for
• leaves not raked up from our yard
• stacked firewood in the driveway not covered with a tarp
• grass over the maximum number of inches / not mowed recently enough
• some stalks from flowers remained as dry stalks in the wintertime
Freaking lawn police. Nearly all our neighbors have lawn service contracts —come 8 AM, a cacaphony of leaf blowers and lawn mowers starts up every goddam day. People around here go in for those cutely manicured hedges that remind me of what toy poodle owners sometimes do to their poodles. Ortho and Mansanto products all over the place, kill every grub and nuke every week and make everything look like a plastic representation of a suburban lawn.
I’ve seen this recently in my town. My roommate keeps the yard nice with trimmed hedges but he got a citation because they say the hedges in front of the front windows must be cut three inches below the window. He specifically wanted the bushes to cover the bottom of the window so the dogs can’t see out, as they go nuts every time someone walks by the house if they see them. He paid for this house and the property on it. You’d think he could decide for himself how high the hedges can be as long as they’re groomed nicely and not looking overgrown. They’re nicely rounded azalea bushes but last year they had to be cut down while blooming or he had to pay 250 dollars to “let the city handle it”. They were going to do it for him if he didn’t do it by then. Since he didn’t have time to raise a stink about it we just cut them down to fit the rule ourselves and now we have to keep a mattress in front of the window so the dogs can’t see out there. Shades don’t cut it. They just tear them up.
I disagree with this as an absolute statement. I had a problem with the city I was living in once, and a nasty letter from a lawyer was much more effective at solving the problem than talking to people ever was. It cost me more than just talking, but I think it was worth it. I definitely don’t consider that money “wasted.”
Obviously, this depends on your local municipal bylaws and actually having a valid legal argument. If you aren’t pissed off enough to pay a lawyer for the initial consultation to find that out, it’s probably not worth it.
I live in a city that is right next to Las Vegas and it is Henderson. Most of the time I tell people that I live in Vegas just because it’s so well known. Also the city is tearing up a crap ton of our roads while replacing the sewer pipes on our side of town. One street that is a main road is half tore up and has been that way for a long while now; I have almost forgotten what the whole road looked like.
They also made a “smart” move by putting in a school by us but filtered the traffic into a bottleneck that makes the road un-drivable in the afternoon during school hours. It’s not so much the school that’s the problem, its the way they handled traffic going in and out of there.
