You CAN Fight City Hall

[Glinda]

Since March, I have been involved in a war with county code enforcement over a garden shed I’ve been building on my property. I think (I hope!) I’ve finally shut this shit down.

Local codes state that if a property owner builds a garden shed of less than 200 square feet, no permits or building inspections are required. My asshole neighbor (I’ve mentioned my issues with him in the past) submitted a complaint to code enforcement, claiming that my garden shed was occupied (a big no-no). Well, the shed is not now, and never has been, occupied. Said asshole neighbor is nothing more than a spiteful asshole neighbor, intent on creating trouble for me any way he can, up to and including submitting false complaints to code enforcement.

Nevertheless, in late March the local code enforcement coordinator (CEC) sent me a letter insisting that I get a permit for the shed. In his letter, no specific information was included as to why a permit was needed, nor was documentation provided as to which specific codes were supposedly violated. As it turns out, this is a gross abuse of procedural due process in the code enforcement arena, and a direct violation of my Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. I didn’t respond to the CEC’s letter because it was a giant pile of fly-blown dog shit. My shed was built carefully following local codes (and exceptions thereto) for my particular zoning designation. Bottom line, the shed does NOT require permits or inspections.

In early June, I received a Notice and Order from the CEC, stating that I was in violation of local codes concerning permits, occupation, and zoning setbacks; I was given 30 days to either tear down the shed, get a permit for it, or request a hearing. I opted to request a hearing and submitted an in-depth review of and rebuttal to these nutty, non-applicable code violation assertions.

About a week later, the CEC vacated the Notice and Order demand and finally explained exactly which codes my shed supposedly violated. The problem was, these new (supposed) code violations were completely different than the violations listed in the previous Notice and Order. Basically, the CEC was flinging an ever-changing list of undocumented and unproven code violations at me in the hope that at least one might stick.

Well, I don't roll over for anybody, especially when I know I'm right.

I was finally able to figure out who was in ultimate charge over this officious prick CEC and his entire department, and sent that guy and everyone else in local government I could think of a letter explaining how my garden shed met every county code (and exceptions thereto), how my Constitutional rights were clearly bring violated, and how this CEC was an ignorant fucking moron who needed to be fired.

A few days ago, CEC’s big boss contacts me and says he’ll look into it. This morning, CEC’s big boss tells me that, yeah, it doesn’t look like your shed is in violation of any county codes, but we’d still appreciate your permission to come inspect it just to be sure.

Yeah, no. I don’t think so.

Today, I spoke with a Real Estate attorney who, as it happens, used to be a member of the county’s Land Use Planning Commission. The attorney told me that I am well within my rights to deny a request to allow code enforcement building inspectors on my property. He also said that the odds of the county taking the next step and petitioning a court for a search warrant to allow them to inspect the shed are about the same as the odds that Donald Trump will stop tweeting. HA!

Late this afternoon, I sent a very polite and respectful letter to the CEC’s big boss and said, in essence, thanks but you’re not welcome here and you need to stop harassing me about this stupid garden shed. We’ll see what happens next.

Whatever it might be, I ask that all of you send your good karma my way. This isn’t my first battle with city hall – years ago I forced the City of San Francisco to do something to stop people from driving their goddamned cars up the sidewalk directly outside my front door. I won.

I hope to win this case as well, but I’m not above asking for any karmic help all of you might be able to add to my fight. Thank you and goodnight.

Updates tomorrow, when I assume I’ll hear back from the CEC’s big boss. Please wish me luck!