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| Note: This is a true story about an encounter a friend had with an unbelievably overbearing, unreasonable and dictatorial City Design Review Board. Unfortunately, my friend is so terrified of the wrath of the Design Review Board and intimidated by their power (after all, they are a governmental agency), that I’ve changed the names and particulars to protect my friend's identity. I assure you however, that I have not changed anything substantive, and that this story is truly representative of what actually happened. |
Dear Diary,
My good friend Joe and his wife Jane moved into my neighborhood several years ago. They hadn’t been married very long and it was their first house. It was a modest two-bedroom home with a small unattached studio type rental unit next to it. When they moved in, the house was surrounded with an eight-foot high chain link fence partially overgrown with ivy. The fence must have been built prior to the building codes that now restrict fence height to no more than five feet, presumably to make it easier for burglars to gain entry.
I guess Joe didn’t much like the chain link fence. Maybe he thought it made his front yard resemble a prison. In any case, the first thing he and Jane did was to replace the chain link fence with a handsome brick and metal fence that was more open, and was of course regulation height. They even installed a sidewalk outside the fence along the street in front of their property. For awhile, the place was a real construction zone, with heavy equipment moving around, etc. I should mention that our neighborhood is not in the high rent district. Joe’s house is now the only one on the block to have a sidewalk in front of it. None of the houses up and down the street seem to have been constructed according to any particular plan. All the lots are small and the houses appear to have been built helter-skelter according to the budgets and whims of the occupants.
It wasn’t until later that I heard the story of the sidewalk. I had assumed that Joe somehow had enough influence with the city government that he was able to convince them to put in the sidewalk, which I had always thought was the responsibility of the city. After all, what are our property taxes for? It turns out that the city hadn’t put in the sidewalk at all, in fact Joe paid for its construction with his own money. Even more astounding, he paid for it not because he wanted to, but because the city had required that he put in the sidewalk before it would approve his request to build the fence. Joe was even intimidated into paying the city to install the sidewalk instead of choosing his own construction crew under the threat that the government inspectors might find fault with the workmanship if it were not built by the city’s crew.
The story gets even more unbelievable. In addition to building the fence on his own property with his own money, the city also required Joe to build the sidewalk on his own property with his own money, and to cede the perimeter on which the sidewalk was built plus a couple of feet for landscaping to the city! This amounted to the loss of a strip of his land about 6 feet by 120 feet extending around two sides of his lot, or probably about 15% of his property.
Joe is still bitter about this, and I don’t blame him in the least, but the story isn’t complete yet. Joe and Jane started having babies. After the second child was born and with a third on the way, it became apparent their small home didn’t provide enough space. Housing prices aren’t cheap, even in this neighborhood, so it was natural for him to consider adding on a second story to their single story house. It turned out to be a bigger project than he anticipated however, and was made especially difficult because he had to work long hours to have enough money to pay for the construction and to cover the cost of materials. Even so, these difficulties paled in comparison to the one struggle he had yet to encounter. Little did Joe know of the battle yet to come with City Hall. In particular there exists a small appointed band of city bureaucrats called the Design Review Board that has absolute dictatorial power over citizens wishing to improve their property.
I was astounded to know that our city even has such a thing as a Design Review Board. Keep in mind that in this neighborhood, houses are constructed of everything from clapboard to stone with building styles seemingly selected by lottery. As far as I can tell, Joe did everything right. He even hired an architect to design the addition instead of trying to do it himself or using some copycat design. His new house was to have central heating and air conditioning, three new bedrooms plus the two already existing, a room for the washer and dryer, three balconies, a walk in closet, and even a Jacuzzi. I’m sure it probably at least doubled the value of his house not to mention increasing the property values in the area. One would think that the design review board would have heartily encouraged Joe in his new construction, but remember that we’re dealing with the government here. Although the Design Review Board is only a small arm of the local government, they are the same as the rest of government in that they are answerable to no man nor to any court of law. They are totally autonomous, and their word is final.
Joe had to pay a $250 fee simply to make an appointment with the design review board regardless of whether they approved his design or not. Needless to say, they did not. Instead, the board members would make only vague references as to the plan’s esthetics, but would not recommend anything in particular that Joe or his architect could do to gain approval. The board’s advice was simply to ‘‘come back with something different.’’ Naturally at this time Joe had nothing better to do than pay his architect to redo the design, wait, and hope for approval at a future date – especially since he and his family had been forced to rent an apartment because of the noise, dust and chaos going on during the demolition necessary for the new construction, an additional expense they could ill afford.
Another trip to the board to the tune of $250 plus his architect’s expenses, and another rejection followed. I’m not sure what transpired at the second meeting, but I think it had something to do with his giving up one of the three balconies he had planned. Joe was forced to come back a third time, again paying the $250 even though his only reason for being there was to contest the board’s decision. In the real world, if you’re unhappy with the performance of a company you can take your business elsewhere. With the government however, particularly with the Design Review Board, not only are you not allowed to take your business elsewhere, you’re required to pay extra to do their bidding even though you despise them. The board was about to reject Joe’s application again for the third time, because although they liked his re-revised plans, they thought that his new house wouldn’t ‘‘harmonize’’ with his adjacent rental unit. The rental unit was, and always has been, sitting at an angle to the main house because of the nature of the streets in the hilly neighborhood where he lives. In this case however, the board was willing to make a suggestion as to how to remedy the situation. They wanted Joe to lop off about 1/3 of the rental unit across one corner so as to make the wall of the rental unit parallel to the main house. This would have caused the rental unit to have a triangular appearance, not to mention making it impossible to rent. How any rational sentient being could think that a small triangular house would harmonize with a square house sitting next to it is beyond me. These must be the kind of people who spend their lives trying to put square pegs into round holes. I’m surprised they didn’t require Joe to make the rental unit into a roundhouse, or worse.
Like a drowning man groping for a life preserver, Joe suggested planting a tree between the main house and the rental unit to disguise the ‘‘unharmonious’’ juncture of the two structures. Fortunately, one of the members of the board happened to be a landscape architect, and Joe had just played to his weakness. The landscape architect jumped up and said ‘‘I like it!’’ and Joe was home free at last. From that point on it was just a matter of negotiating the exact species and positioning of the tree, and Joe’s plan was finally approved.
Now Joe could at last commence doing something more worthwhile than playing psychological games with imbeciles – he could finally start building his home. If you think however, that the final step in the procedure is having the omnipotent Design Review Board’s stamp of approval, you are wrong. The board sends out its Gestapo every few days to make sure you do not try to take any liberties with their commandments. When the construction crew went to build the portico for his front door, Joe realized that the drawings that had been approved hadn’t really taken into account the slope of the hill upon which his house sits and that in order to avoid bumping ones head on the entryway, not to mention making it look much nicer, the entryway would have to be built just a little taller than the plans allowed for. Besides, he and his wife and children were going to be living in the house, not the government. So during construction, Joe had the construction crew build the roof of the entryway just 5½ inches higher than the plans allowed. It was barely enough to notice, but it did improve the look considerably. A few days later the government inspector came to pay one of his routine visits. The inspector looked at the entryway, looked at the plans, and looked at the entryway again. Eventually, he got out his tape measure and carefully measured all of the dimensions of the portico including its height from the concrete porch. Finally he made his pronouncement. ‘‘Its five and one-half inches too high’’ he said.
Apparently building inspectors, especially those appointed by the government, are not to be argued with. Joe tells me that if an inspector disapproves the construction there is no recourse. He says that if a person defies their orders, that person will have to pay a hefty fine each day until the situation is rectified to the inspector’s satisfaction. Failure to pay, can and will result in jail time and can even result in forfeiture of the building and fines to cover the cost of its demolition.
Joe tore down the portico and rebuilt it according to the specifications approved by his favorite government agency, the local Design Review Board.
This still isn't the end of the story however – remember that tree that the design review board required? For the rest of his days, Joe can look forward to periodic visits from government inspectors to make sure that he plants the tree in the correct position, and that he keeps it fed, watered, and healthy. I wonder how long an almond tree lives?
I think I’m going to talk to Joe about joining the Libertarian Party. It shouldn’t be too difficult.
| Note: If you’d like more information about contractors and the insane rules of the building code, visit http://www.televar.com/~tripower/ for an exposé of them. |
| ‘‘...this government, swollen and arrogant with pelf, goes butting into our business...It checks the amount of tropical oils in our snack foods, tells us what kind of gasoline we can buy for our cars and how fast we can drive them, bosses us around about retirement, education, and what's on TV; counts our noses and asks fresh questions about who's still living at home and how many bathrooms we have; decides whether the door to our office or shop should have steps or a wheelchair ramp; decrees the sex and complexion of the people we hire there; lectures us on safe sex; dictates what we can sniff, smoke, and swallow; and waylays young men, ships them to distant places, and tells them to shoot people they don't even know.’’ |
| — P.J.O'Rourke |