Government slams Sandy victims with “failure to maintain property” citations
Would that be before or after they were forbidden to approach the properties by all those armed men?
This story would have gone into my “Yeah? What’s new?” memory hole except for this precious quote:
“The Department of Buildings said the citation is a mere formality. It’s a way to keep track of all downed trees. But for people in this neighborhood…it’s a permanent mark on their property that they want removed from the records.”
Y’know, I haven’t worried about my “permanent record” since grade school. Early grade school. And the threat should have been instructive to me, even then.
And in a way I have no sympathy for the offended-against property owners, who are mostly outraged because they didn’t think getting a tree off their roof was their responsibility.
Rosanne and Joe Cavaliere are still trying to clean up from the hurricane. They have branches through their roof, busted front windows, and, to add insult to injury, they recently received a citation notice from the city.
“It makes me angry, but it’s also ridiculous!” Rosanne Cavaliere told CBS 2’s Jessica Schneider. They got it on Nov. 9, cited with “failure to maintain” their property. But as they pointed out to CBS 2’s Schneider on Tuesday night, it’s a city tree that they were waiting for the city to remove.”
Rosanne? Joe? I offer, for your assistance, this set of helpful hints.
They’d likely be fined for removing the city’s property without permission.
True story:
A city attorney called the city offices and said that there was a dead tree on city property in front of his house and that the city needed to cut it down. The city community development officer told him to have it cut down and the city would pay half the bill. He told the officer that only the city could remove one of its trees from city property and that the development officer did not have the authority to authorize him to cut down the tree, therefore, it would not be legal for him to cut it down. He further said that since it was a city tree on city property, he had no intention of paying half the bill. He then reminded the officer that cars parked on the street, and as the city’s attorney he was notifying them that if the tree fell and damaged one of the cars or injured a person, the city would be liable. The officer repeated the offer to split the bill. The attorney then told the mayor who also offered to split the bill if he cut down the tree.
Don’t be too quick to blame the homeowners for not removing the trees. There may be more to the story.
I will confirm that, in my city, if you take off a tree from the terrace the city gets upset. Probably fines, but I don’t know that for certain. One isn’t allowed to chainsaw the sucker into bits. You’re supposed to wait for the city crew to come around.
Reason is that the terrace belongs to the city (even if _I_ have to mow it) and the tree isn’t mine, but ‘city property’.
Although I like to think if a city tree was poking holes in my house I’d clean up the mess and drag the remains to the curb, and not wait.
Joel, I’m having trouble accessing the site. It’s stuck on December 3rd’s post. I got here this time via Claire’s link a couple of days ago. I saw you mentioned server troubles?
Sorry, Don, I’ve got nothing. As far as I can tell everything’s working fine right now.
Don, FWIW, I’ve been having trouble lately with Joel’s site not giving me the latest posts. But so far (knock wood), if I just refresh the page after I arrive, it updates properly.
I love Joel’s blog. It’s the only one (other than my own) that I visit every day. Glad to be able to send some traffic over here.
Thank you, Claire! I think this must be some problem the host is going through. I piggyback off the forgottenweapons.com site, which as you know has gone down a couple of times recently. Ian says it’s because his traffic got so big they had to move him to a different server or something, I’m only this many and don’t understand it. Possibly they don’t have all the bugs out yet.