Article from Reason by Joe Setyon.
When the city of Santa Rosa, California, told Jason Windus he had to lower the fence around his home, he complied. But the Santa Rosa Code Enforcement Division probably couldn’t have predicted his next move.
Windus set up multiple naked mannequin models in his yard. With the shortened fence, they’re on full display for the entire neighborhood to see. And since they’re just mannequins, it’s not as though he’s running afoul of any public indecency regulations.
I'm just making a point," said Jason. #abc7now #SantaRosa pic.twitter.com/9wYQClvNRn
— Wayne Freedman (@WayneFreedman) March 19, 2019
“The way I see it is you can either cop a resentment or you can have some fun with it,” Windus told NBC Bay Area. “There’s no sense in getting angry.”
It all started after Windus built a fence to keep his dogs from leaving his property, which is on a street corner. “It was a 6-foot fence, like everybody else’s around here,” he told The Press-Democrat. At least one neighbor wasn’t a fan. A city spokesperson told KTVU someone filed a complaint last October regarding the fence. It was found to be in violation of the city code because it might block drivers’ views of the intersection.
Read the entire article at Reason.
wpDiscuz
An arbitrary government decision – surprise! Great response! Don’t get mad, get even!
I moved from Santa Rosa last year.
The place has been highjacked by Progressives (Communists).
They almost bankrupted us for not having a permit to paint, replace windows. We were renovating a blighted building, for a community center (the neighbors wanted).
It was red tagged for 3+ years!
Jason moved us!
There is an easy way around their BS rules on renovations. In the city that my rental house is in, the regs say you need a permit to replace the roof, but it says NOTHING about “repairing” it. SO when I decided to replace my roof, my self, I simply replaced the front half one year, (NOV), and then replaced the back half the next year (FEB). They couldn’t do SHEET because it was not done all at the same time, so it was considered repairs! You could do the same thing with painting or anything else; yes it may take longer, but my objective was to prevent the city from stealing money they had no business stealing!
I really like Mr. Windus’ sense of humor. I suspect the city council or whoever made him take the fence down are not smiling.
This is the power of complaint. City governments seem to lean in favour of complainers, which tends to encourage them. Then everyone gets in a pissing match scutinizing every detail of the laws and we end up with absurd stuff like this..To be fair, when one makes what they feel to be a valid complaint, and nothing happens, that can be very frustrating. Of course the key here is the word “valid”. Was there a valid complaint? Maybe, maybe not. “…because it might block drivers’ views of the intersection.” could be a valid complaint. But wait, what’s that word “might” doing in there? It either blocked the view by roadway standards or it didn’t. Did the city check? If they did then a statement without that word “might” wouldn’t be in there; it would say something like “…blocks drivers’views of the intersection within “X” number of feet and therefor is a safety hazard…” But it didn’t (based on this article). This suggests that the city was lazy and just sent the order to the homeowner without bothering to determine if this was a valid complaint or just soemone complaining because they can.
Makes sense to me. Good for him. In my town the city will site you for having a bush on the corner. But they can have that very same bush on a median blocking everyone’s view and it’s fine. The law doesn’t apply to the one’s who make them. We know that especially well these days.
Why not, if you HAVE to have this tax, just grandfather him in, and say by X date, the taxes have to be handled like this…