Years ago some guy knocked on my grandmothers door and told her she was not in compliance with city code, she didn’t have her address painted on the curb. She was told they would be in the neighborhood the next week and would paint the curb for her. The cost was $30. I took the piece of paper and went to the Tacoma city hall to check the statute on the piece of paper the guy gave my Grandma. There was no such law and there was no requirement to have addresses painted on the curb. I went to talked to someone at the police department and they were very interested this scam. The following week 2 guys showed up to paint the curbs but were arrested for their scam. Painting addresses on the curb would have been useless in that neighborhood anyway, with all the cars parked on the street no one would see the numbers.
This is pretty much exactly how things were in the town I worked in. Public utilities have the authority to block streets when needed because people like having water and electricity. A complete blockage needs a traffic plan in place. A moving van or delivery truck blocking the street? Not legal.
In my Los Angeles suburb, residents own out to the center line of the street. There’s an easement for the street and sidewalks. Under certain circumstances, you can buy out the easement; typically where the city and home owners want to prevent side-street access from the main road.
Despite owning the land, the street, curb, sidewalk, and the trees between them are all owned by the city. You need permits to modify them. There’s a blanket permission to paint your house number on the curb. (I also have the house number on the house, garage, and mailbox.)
Was it expensive to re-register all the official documents involved in an address change? I know they used to just issue an official sticker to affix to the back of your license, but (at least in Florida) that’s long gone — they want the dough.
IIRC, not really. You just changed things when renewal time rolled around. The expensive part was getting all your business cards, letterhead, invoices and such reprinted to show the new number. Tax-deductible business expense, but a PITA anyway.
When I was living in Chicago my sewer line was blocked, and the company that was doing the repairs had to dig up the street in front of my house to repair it (the sewer main runs down the center of the street, and homeowners are responsible to the pipe from their house to the main). This required them to get a city permit to block and dig up the street, and then arrange to have the street repaired. As I recall, someone from the city came out the day before the repair was scheduled to post signs announcing the upcoming closing, including that no parking was permitted in the section being repaired.
All of this was at my expense, of course.
In Calgary we get a temporary permit form the city if we need to park a shipping container or dumpster on a road. Same for an excavation with heavy equipment.
The parking is important - I’ve seen addresses painted on the curb, but only in places where street parking is not common. Where I live, there would be no point , as there is rarely a time when even half the houses don’t have a car parked in front.
Oh and moving/delivery trucks blocking traffic are not actually legal ( people usually try to save space with their own vehicles) but no one is going to complain if a truck double parks and traffic can still get by or a delivery vehicle blocks the street for 15 minutes - because those people also need to get deliveries.
We used to get solicitations (without the attempted legality scam) to paint the number on our curb, supposedly for charity. I didn’t contribute, but they painted it anyway, along with everyone else on the block, I presumed trying to make us feel guilty and pay up. It’s been several years now since that happened, I don’t know what changed. Anyway, your last sentence is really the key. I do volunteer work twice a week doing tree care for recently-planted street trees, working off a printed list by address and tree species. You will frequently see me cruising slowly by some houses trying to see the number of even one house, but it seems to be a game that some homeowners (or building owners) play not to have visible numbers. But it certainly wouldn’t help me if all the numbers were painted on the curb, I wouldn’t be able to see them.
OK, I’ve never seen that term before. Is that the grassy strip between the sidewalk and the curb? I know we’ve had threads about that before, where I grew up we called it the parking strip.
Yes, the grassy strip, where some communities plant trees, between the sidewalk and the street.
I understand several of the names for that, but “parking strip” sounds weird to me. So you not have curbs? Do cars actually park on it?
There are curbs there, and no, you don’t park on the parking strip. The name may, however, be a relic from the time when the transition from the sidewalk to the street was not so well defined? I really don’t know, Where I lived there were a lot of trees on that strip, but not every house had trees there.
Me too - I was thinking of the “Denver boot.”
Nvmd, my mistake.
The access to the state highway is a pie shaped piece of land. Nicely flowered by wild flowers, btw.
Any way, from the gravel of my road it meets a Y shaped paved road.
The county paved it.
When it was getting done, we were told to go the back way off our road. For a couple of days. It had saw horse barricades. Ok. We comply.
3 days later I drive that way and some goof ball with wide knobby tires decided to leave his mark.
It’s still there.
I guess it was illegal. I defy them to find out who may have taken the little joy ride.
On the sub-topic of house numbers on the curb.
A few years ago the local private Catholic high school would paint your house number on the driveway approach. Unless someone was blocking your driveway you could see the house number.