Some of you have probably seen one of the videos where a code enforcement official is ticketing a homeowner for grilling or smoking because someone called in a complaint about the smell.
The basics being that smoke isn’t allowed to cross property lines.
We don’t have that but we have a burn ban at certain times of the year. SoP is that the police and fire are called, the police do their ticket thing and the fire does their water thing. When they leave there is no more volition of the fire ban, but usually a very soaked yard. If they light it back up the process starts over again but that’s a bit tough to do right away due to that everything is soaked.
Smoke can’t cross property lines? This is actually a thing? So people are expected to control the laws of physics?
Anyway, subsequent citations for the same offense often mean that the fines will go up. Eventually you might have to actually appear before a judge to explain yourself, and he’s not going to be happy to see you.
It seems like there was a bit more to the story than the video shows. If the photo from the story is to be believed, there was way more smoke than I have ever seen from a household grill. I don’t believe in excessive regulation, but if my neighbor was putting out that much smoke every time he was cooking, I would probably complain too.
Yeah, most such bylaws have a “normal usage” kind of caveat. You can make normal amounts of noise, like playing music at a reasonable volume, or using a lawn mower you bought at Home Depot, but if you’re going out of your way to create an excessive amount of noise, that’s a problem.
Sounds like this just went beyond normal and reasonable.
I had a neighbor who used to make chicharrones on his grill. It would make a smoke screen that could hide a battleship. Thankfully, it smelled great, and I was across the street, but I could see being annoyed if that much smoke drifted over the fence into my yard.
Really, the whole “harassment” story seems a bit much. How does someone harass you by making parking and noise complaints if you are not in fact violating some law or ordinance? I mean, lets say the woman calls about excessive noise - what are the police going to do when they get there if there isn’t any excessive noise. If there isn’t any excessive noise , do they even knock on the door? Or if she calls to complain about “a large grill on a trailer emblazoned with a commercial sign parked in their driveway” , what if it’s not there when the police get there?
But as far as how many times can you be cited - my guess is that there is no limit on how many times you could be cited and it would be up to the judge to decide whether to dismiss any. And it would probably depend on whether the citations were five minutes apart or fifteen minutes apart or thirty minutes apart.
I didn’t see the longer video showing the amount of smoke.
This was referenced by another similar video where the homeowner asked about this one. But looked kinda staged so I went with a more easily verified one.
That’s actually exactly what I was thinking of - in NYC, you might get a parking ticket dismissed if you received it within three hours of another ticket for the same offense - if you didn’t fight the first ticket. It’s not an actual policy , it’s just a common practice by the administrative law judges and apparently they will not do it if you fight both tickets.
( You can only get one ticket per day for the same status offense, like expired inspection or registration even if there are fewer than three hours between the ticket you got at 11 pm Friday and 1am Saturday )
Yeah, there’s no hard and fast rule about it for the specific reason that if there were, people would do what you describe, and treat one citation as a dose of immunity, and go hog wild, which would be counterproductive to the point of anti-nuisance ordinances.
What there are are general principles of fairness and proportionality which will almost always control. The precise instant a judge sniffs somebody trying to get over, those principles waft away through an open window somewhere. I was in the courtroom once when an absentee landlord type admitted that he took his time doing general fixes and updates to properties, despite having received due notice of code violations with daily fines, because he figured there was no way he was actually going to have to pay the $750 a day times three properties times 180 days or whatever it was, because after all, that’s a lot of money and who really takes this stuff that seriously? That was not a thing he should have said. If he had not said it, the judge would have almost certainly thought it. But he did.
Long story short, if cops shows up 5 times during one block party, and issues 15 citations, and you show up and say sorry man, we turned it down and cleaned up the grill after the first time, but I guess the neighbor was still mad, you’re probably not paying 15 violations. If you show up and say well, being on the obstinate side, we already got the one, so fuck the neighbor, was my general thinking, you are maybe paying 15 violations.
I said I was obstinate, not stupid. If someone shows up and wants to issue a second citation, I’d try to talk them out of it, but would definitely shut things down.
Decades ago I had a fire going all day long to burn up a couple trees I’d cut down. I did not know there was an ordinance against that type of burning.
A neighbor called the police, who showed up as required. Technically they should have made me put the fire out, but they hated the person who complained. So, they had me bring food out (hotdogs and marshmallows) since cooking fires were specifically permitted.
Try checking out the ordinances in some of Chicago’s upscale suburbs such as Tinley Park, Highland Park, Lincolnshire, Hinsdale, etc. People in those communities want those ordinances because it keeps their expensive environment quiet and clean.
I would say that, if you cooked with a gas grill and didn’t make a lot of smoke, you probably wouldn’t have a problem because people are reasonable. Charcoal grills tend to make a lot more smoke. Nobody wants a cloud of soot billowing into their yard.
Sometimes it’s not about smoke being able to cross property lines - for example, it’s illegal for me to use a fire pit or patio fireplace. I can’t use a propane grill on a roof , balcony or terrace or use or store a propane grill on a property with more than three units. Even if I could keep the smoke within the property lines. But of course, if my neighbors don’t either see it or smell it , they won’t know about it to report it.
Seems it’s a rather strong wind that’s carrying the smoke across the street before it has a chance to rise/diffuse. If this happens a lot, I can understand the neighbor whose home gets regularly immersed in dense smoke being irritated.
A smoker burning wood chips/pellets can create a lot of smoke, quite a bit more than gas or charcoal does.
Yeah, it seems from the story I read that the guy isn’t using a standard-sized grill, it’s one of those big ones made from a 55-gallon barrel. The kind of thing you’d use if you were cooking for 50 people in a park or some such place. No way you’d use if just “for your family” in your backyard every week, unless you were trying to be a dick.
I suspect these guys are the backyard grilling equivalent of those truck guys who “roll coal”. They know exactly what they’re doing, but figure you can’t stop them, so fuck you.
Pellet smokers can put out a ton of smoke when you start them up. Wood smokers can also put out a lot at times.
I don’t buy that. In my experience, if you are smoking like that, you don’t put food on during that period unless you like it tasting like shit. My guess is this is when they are firing it up and it will soon settle down. Like when the code enforcement guy shows up and you don’t see smoke billowing around.
