Should you maybe also be pitting your city?
Right, a *city *you can reason with. An HOA, though, fuhgeddaboutit.
Because they were charging $20 for “admission”. The flyer said it’s to cover the cost of hot dogs and burgers, but, c’mon… What kind of hot dogs and burgers were they buying?!
I said I’d give 'em my blessing, as required by the city, if they followed the law, but there was no way I was ever going to pay $20 to go to the party.
The flyer also mentioned that I had to bring a dessert for a pot luck, but I’m not sure if that was a requirement like the $20 or a strong suggestion.
My assumption, the reason I wasn’t about to drive down the portion of the street that wasn’t closed per the permit, but closed nonetheless, is that the cops would have no problem ticketing me for any issues that arose.
I could well be wrong on that, but given that the cops couldn’t bother asking them to follow the law, I wasn’t about to even try pulling out.
Honestly, I have issues with the city’s handling of this type of thing, but the portion you quoted was more of a background explaining how I didn’t (and don’t) know the individuals throwing the block party.
As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t really matter whose name is actually on the permit and who’s actually handling the logistics as long as the people who lose their street access sign off on it.
The city apparently feels the same way.
I agree that it’s a bit weird, and, when I first saw the flyer, I was a bit thrown, but it ultimately makes sense. What matters (ideally) is the approval of the affected houses, not the individual who actually handles the logistics.
Now it’d be nice if the city actually held them to those terms, but that’s, as I said, a different issue than who they let have the permit.
This thread is bizarre to me. This guy is pitting a legitimate grievance. Some people are blocking the street in front of his house. He’s having to have someone else drive by and get him so he can leave. He flat out told you that part of blockade is a vehicle, and you can’t move someone else’s vehicle.
And it turns out they only even legally have the right to block it off after his house, so he could still get out. So they’re not only being douchebags in blocking “neighbors,” but also doing so illegally.
And yet the response is to make fun of him? To tell him he should go to the party (when most of you have made it clear you don’t party)?
Is there something I’m not getting? Why is this apparently not a legitimate gripe? What he describes sounds pretty crappy to me–though I admit I’ve never heard of a block party permit (as I don’t think they really do them here).
I agree. And the OP is being refreshingly and maturely circumspect about it all too!
I think he has every right to bitch, and applaud his maturity overall!
Oh I agree he has right to pit and gripe. I was just hoping there was a way to rectify the situation. I wasn’t telling him actually back up and hit a car on purpose, I was just wondering if it HAD happened, who would be at fault. I would’ve called the police and swear out a complaint. The city will never fix the problem if people don’t complain. I know a person who lives close to football stadium and every game day people block her drive, sometimes they even park on her drive. The police told her to sit out in a lawn chair and tell people who try to park in her way to go away. She ain’t gonna do that. I told her to put a sign up for parking and charge $20 a pop. Either she would make alittle cash or people would move on!!
Because he sounds like a selfish, grumpy old man. Did he try stepping out of his house and saying “hey guys, would you mind moving your car so I can get out,” or was his first move to call the cops?
The permit, more or less, exists to grant permission to close the street on a specific day for a specific time. It doesn’t need to be for a block party, but that’s (for obvious reasons) the most common usage in a residential area.
By issuing the permit, it allows the city to (ideally) make sure that the people in the affected houses don’t mind losing their street access and the whims of their neighbors & allows them to verify that the planned activities have any required building/sound amplification permits.
In practice, as I learned the hard way over the weekend, there’s no day-of oversight. So, apparently, as long as you say X, Y, & Z, like the city wants, you can more or less do whatever you want.
The police department, as I learned from the very nice receptionist at the non-emergency number when I called, doesn’t have access to the specifics of the permit. They know that the permit was granted for a portion of the street, but that’s it.
The City Manager’s office are apparently the only ones capable of enforcing the permit regulations, as they & the City Clerk are the only ones who know the specifics (and the Clerk doesn’t have any power in this situation), but since block party permits are only granted for evenings and weekends, that ultimately doesn’t mean anything.
Of course, given the fact that I called the cops and told the receptionist exactly what the permit said, as well as what they actually did, and the cops saw the illegally parked vehicle for themselves, and nothing happened, I doubt that giving the department access to the specifics would change anything.
But, as I said, it didn’t cause any major issues; it was just a massive pain in the ass, which wasn’t rectified until the block party ended (despite the law actually being on my side). I managed to get my stuff done, with my friend’s help, so that’s something.
There was probably enough room to get past the truck if I moved the cones, since I believe the K-9 officers did just that (unless they had they truck moved for them, which is a possibility), but since my neighbors had legal approval to close part of the street and apparently nobody cared which part they closed, I wasn’t about to try pulling out, moving the cones, and maneuvering past the vehicle. Especially with the cops at the block party.
(And to give you all an idea of what I’m talking about with the vehicle, picture a pick-up truck backing straight out of a driveway, so far that the front bumper is over the curb. Then take traffic cones and put them between the edge of rear bumper and the curb on the other side of the street. It was almost exactly that.)
Are you familiar with what a block party is? It’s where the city grants the residents of a street permission to close the street so that they might have a small street fair in the middle of it.
Because the cops neither know, nor care, about the specifics of where the city said the street should be closed to vehicular traffic and where the street was actually closed to vehicular traffic, I could very easily have been ticketed for it, even if I could find the random guy I never met who owned the truck and convince him to move it to let me out.
As I said above, I may have even been able to maneuver around it by moving the cones, since the K9 SUVs got through somehow, but it’s against the law to drive on a closed street–and block party closures are legal closures, with the full backing of the city. While some cities have a local traffic exception for block parties, this is not one of them. The street is closed, period.
That’s why it requires the residents of the affected houses to sign off on the permit: so they can say they don’t mind giving up their street access for the duration of the block party.
WHat was the block party people’s plan if an emergency vehicle needed to get through?
As I said, luckily that didn’t happen.
I assume that’s also the reason why the city defines “removable” as it does, and why it forbids the use of vehicles for that purpose.
As I mentioned above, the K9 SUVs got through, so either they move the vehicle to grant necessary access or there was enough room where the cones were, between the bumper of the vehicle & the curb, for passage of standard emergency vehicles. Of course, the K9 unit was an expected, invited guest, so I wouldn’t assume that spontaneous emergency vehicle would have the same ease, especially if the vehicle did need to be moved.
If the emergency vehicle in question was a firetruck, which I’m 100% sure wouldn’t have enough room for clear passage, I have no idea what would’ve happened. Since the K9 SUVs parked in front of the hydrant, though, a fire would’ve been a logistical nightmare for multiple parties.
In other words: it’s a very good thing we didn’t have to find out.
I missed the Edit window, but I realized that this might be a bit confusing, since the block party is over.
The street is not currently closed–it’s closed for the duration of the block party, which can’t be for more than 12 consecutive hours. (According to the permit, anyway–and we all know how seriously the city takes those… :rolleyes: )
But, anyway, the street was reopened when the party ended, as it was supposed to be.
The second sentence, despite being written in the present tense, is written with an implied “When the street is closed for a block party”, rather than as the definitive sentence that I wrote it as.
It’s a traffic citation, not a felony. Why not take the ticket and fight it in court? As long as you weren’t driving on the section legally closed by the permit, you’re not breaking the law. The permit is your defense. Ticket gets thrown out. Yeah, you deal with inconvenience that you are probably not going to be compensated for, but you get to leave your house without inconveniencing some other party.
If you live in a world where there’s no chance of an ALJ saying “You knew about the block party and saw the street was closed and drove on it anyway”, I’d like to live in that world.
Some ALJs (and judges in general) are incredibly stupid.
There’s no benefit to me getting a ticket that may or may not get thrown out.
It’s even possible that the law would actually be against me driving on the street, as stupid laws exist. I wasn’t (and I’m not) about to pull up state and local laws on this matter to verify that the most I could get hit with is a traffic citation & that I’d be able to fight it successfully.
The city granted permission for the individual who blocked the road to do so. I’m not entirely sure that the law cares that he did so in the wrong place. The cops certainly didn’t.
When the big truck with all the blinky lights and sirens starts pushing on the side of the blocking pick-up, the pick-up’s owner will get the message soon enough. Firemen *love *it when they have a chance to do that. 
Actually, I was talking to friend about that when he picked up, and that’s what we agreed would probably happen if someone needed a firetruck and it got there before the owner of the pickup did.
Luckily firetrucks make effective battering rams.
Luckier still, one wasn’t needed.
I live in the same world you do where traffic violations and charges of breaking the law are adjudicated in court, not in the street. “I also knew that the permit specifically closed the street at a point that did not include my driveway, therefore my driveway was illegally blocked and I had every legal right to access the street in front of my driveway as there was no legal prohibition to do so.”
Well, here is where I might disagree with you. The benefit is having access to the public street at the end of your driveway and defending your legal right to it. What’s the benefit to complaining here about your rights being usurped when you failed to defend them? There isn’t really one, right? But that didn’t stop you. I’m not saying you’ve no right to complain, but it would seem that your choice of venue has minimal, if any, benefit.
I don’t think you need to pull local and state laws, all you need is the evidence you already have (the permit) and a copy of the local ordinance that specifically states that public right-of-ways may be closed for private functions with a legally-issued permit specifically indicating the right-of-way at issue and the method in which that right-of-way may be blocked. You’ve already indicated that parking a car across the road is not a legally permitted method.
You can’t be sure the law cares? Isn’t that what the permit process is about? You can’t because you didn’t even bother to challenge the legality of blocking your driveway. Cops aren’t always right and they are most definitely not the sole arbiter of the law. That’s why we have courts.
You know, come to think of it, are you just assuming that the cop didn’t care or did you even talk to him? Maybe I missed something in your previous posts, but did you at least approach the cop and ask nonchalantly if he could help you get out of your driveway? If you had a copy of the permit, that might have been sufficient to get him to at least facilitate your access to the street while watching out for the safety of the party-goers, even if he didn’t require them to move their blockades. That would have worked out for you, right?
On its face, that sounds like a good defense.
But I don’t know that there’s no legal prohibition to do so. And court isn’t the place where I want to find out if there is, especially when I took care of everything I needed to take care of without risking a loss of money or significant time.
What’s the benefit to complaining here period?
The Pit doesn’t exist to change the world.
If I come here and complain, I lose maybe an hour or two. If that.
If I “defend” a right to drive on a closed street that I may or may not legally have under the law, at best, I end up with a wash.
At worst, I lose both money and time.
When I can get what I needed to get done without risking any substantial loss & the risk yields no additional reward, then, no, there’s benefit to taking the risk.
That’s right, I can’t. Because, as I said, I’m not risking my time and money when the best case scenario is a wash.
There are very few places where the law actually matters. Those places have names like “Court of Appeals” and “Supreme Court”.
Everywhere else, you’re at the whim of whatever someone else wants. There’s a reason that lower courts don’t create binding precedents.
Ideally, yes.
In practice, that’s clearly another story. Otherwise, the City Manager’s office would’ve instituted some form of day of verification.
Who also aren’t always right (and aren’t required to be).
There’s no injunction getting them to move the barricades to where they’re supposed to be. Assuming I got a ticket, by the time I went in front of an ALJ, the best thing that would happen is that the ticket gets thrown out. It wouldn’t change what actually happened, and the same thing would be free to happen the following year.
The actual problem is the lack of day of oversight, and the changes that need to be instituted need to be handled in the City Manager’s office. There’s nothing an ALJ or the judiciary can do.
Quite frankly, getting a ticket then (assuming that I end up with an ALJ who gives a shit) getting it thrown out does nothing except cause further aggravation. The actual offending actions are long over and the actual offending parties aren’t relevant to the case. All that happens is that I lose time fighting a ticket that I shouldn’t have gotten in the first place. At that level, there are no other outcomes or effects.
As such, I’d much rather find ways to do what I need to do without getting the ticket in the first place. Which I did.
Maybe, maybe not. They didn’t see a problem with how things were, even after I reported how they should be, so I don’t know that me talking to them face to face would have changed anything.
It may just be me, but I don’t see much difference between “These people blocked the street further down than they should have, can you please ask them to move the barriers to where they’re supposed to be so the rest of us can get out?” and “These people blocked the street further down than they should have, can you please help me get past them so I can get out?”
The way I see it, either the cops care about the rest of us losing our street access or they don’t. Since the barriers remained where they were through the end of the block party, even after I made a report that explicitly drew their attention to it, I feel like the answer is “they don’t”.
Since I didn’t try, and thus don’t know, you may well be right, but I found a way that worked equally well for me. I assume the other houses between mine and the barriers did the same.
If the local cops refuse to enforce it, I would have called the Sheriff’s department.
Is there some sort of civil tort where the OP could have sued the permit holders/owner of the truck blocking traffic?
You cannot fix a problem by just defending your right to do nothing about it. You obviously called the wrong people. You should’ve made an official police report, and since the cops were already on the scene it would’ve taken all if 5 min.to remove the blocking vehicle from in front of your drive. Have you ever heard the axiom; the squeaky wheel gets the grease ! Sometimes it pays to squeak loudly at the right people. I can tell you this, for certain, I would’ve gotten out of that drive way, and dared them to ticket me!!