Code Enforcement

Reward the troublemakers, punish the property owners

l3wis August 19, 2014 9Comments

Yesterday one of my South DaCola foot soldiers had a voicemail left in the afternoon. It was a message from a reporter at one of the local TV stations. She said she wanted to do a story about flowers in the boulevard. The soldier called them back about 30 minutes later, and the reporter told her that they no longer were going to do the story.

So what happened in that 30 minutes? I wonder if a call was also placed to city hall?

As for people who are beautifying city property (boulevards). I find it ironic that the city wants to punish people who are using their own resources to improve city property through code violations and fines.

But when other citizens of our community drink all day in one of our public parks, pass out, get into fights, etc. the city administration decides to reward them with bathrooms, picnic tables and a fence to contain their rowdiness.

To hell with a Bad Neighbor, more like a Bad Mayor.

UPDATED: Sioux Falls ‘Flower Police’ strike hard and fast

l3wis August 11, 2014 13Comments

UPDATED: This is the photo of where the flowers had to be torn out, you can see they were cut out. I think it actually looks worse, because now it is just a bunch of rocks. I guess how this came about was code enforcement tried to fine a lady with rocks in her boulevard, and she got mad and took around 40 photos of other properties violating the same thing she was, so code enforcement chased them down also. Ridiculous. I sometimes wonder if city employees or managers THINK before they act on stupid stuff like this.

Recently a resident of Sioux Falls was asked to remove her flowers from the boulevard (Day Lillies) by city code enforcement. This is in the wake of the city council recently stating they want to review the administration’s recommendation to limit flower planting and other landscaping in the boulevard.

According to current city ordinance, your entire boulevard should be grass only. But after the city council heard about the proposed changes they asked for the city code enforcement to not enforce the current ordinance until they come up with proposed changes, and they agreed they would not pursue issuing fines (because there are thousands of violators city wide). Apparently the code enforcement officers don’t give a rat’s behind what the city council thinks. The resident was asked to tear out the flowers within a week or face a $100 fine.

Code enforcement is supposedly based on neighbor complaints, but I guess all the neighbors of this resident were so upset the city did this, they sent the lady sympathy cards.

This has renewed an interest in a petition drive that may start very soon regarding what residents can plant in their boulevards and having the city public works trim THEIR trees in the boulevard instead of fining and charging residents to trim them.

Once again, if citizens want PUBLIC SERVICE and CONSTITUTIONAL Property RIGHTS they have to pursue it on their own at the ballot box, because our elected officials are asleep at the wheel. Just look at how long it is taking them to ban alcohol at Van Eps Park?

Get your ‘Boulevard’ on!

l3wis July 15, 2014 8Comments

The city is tired of NO consistency with boulevard landscaping in town (and those pesky decorative mailboxes). How dare people allow their homes to look different then their neighbors. Better charge them with criminal nuisance! (I won’t get into that). So now they are suggesting a compromise of allowing up to 20% to be landscaped, and you have to get a permit from the city (never miss an opportunity to miss out on a pointless fee).

This is how I look at it. The city owns the boulevard, but the adjacent homeowner/business is responsible for maintaining it, they should be allowed to landscape it however they want to within reason, circumstance and how the area is zoned. If the city wants to TELL us how our boulevards should look, fine. You can come and mow them and trim trees in them. But since we are responsible for the maintenance, we should have a say in what goes in them.

Of course, in this document (DOC) they show a lot of bad examples. That is a whole other ball of wax, if someone isn’t maintaining it properly, then yes, they should have to. But telling people they can’t have flowers or painted green boulders (that one made me laugh) on property they maintain doesn’t make sense, seems they are getting their panties in a bunch over nothing. But since our city is run like a dictatorship, it doesn’t surprise me. Pretty soon they will start arresting people for not mowing their lawns.