Sick and very sad: Woman Sues City of Tulsa For Cutting Down Her Edible Garden

[TorchTheWitch]

66. well, that's what I call them

Technically, it's just the township code enforcement office but they mostly handle building inspections, zoning issues and that sort of thing. But part of their function is to deal with whatever rule violations there may be concerning the local property ordinances. I just call them the Lawn Maintenance Police when they do these ridiculous things like waste time and tax payer money measuring the height of someone's lawn grass and citing and following up on millimeter grass infractions. We also have what I call the Garbage Inspection Police which is also the code enforcement department... but that's another interesting and ridiculous story.

Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, the neighbors have halfway cleaned up their backyard! I went out in the yard last night to do the pool chemicals and couldn't believe my eyes... or my nose. The poop is gone, the poison ivy is gone, the thigh-high weeds and former vegetable garden have been hacked down, but the trash was just shoved into one corner (and there's so much of it it's taking up about a third of the whole yard). It's a start though. I have no idea what brought this on - for a second I panicked and wondered if they read my rant here on DU! But I know they couldn't have because they haven't had internet service for over a year (they sometimes ask me to look something up on the internet for them). They also don't give a crap what the neighbors think of their yard... they've made that abundantly clear.

It's really strange, but I actually like these people. Well, I like her - him I wouldn't mind if he got lost in a forest two trees thick for the rest of his natural life. I just found out through the neighborhood gossip that he's been thrown out again (I wondered why it was so quiet over there the past week), but this is the fourth or fifth time since they moved in, and she always takes him back in a week or two. People seem to think that this time is the winner because he's apparently living with some other woman now. We'll see. I'd really hope he's gone for good this time since he was always 99% of the problem. Dealing with the problems they cause the neighbors is a lot harder when you don't hate the people. Everyone else here is pretty much the same - they drive us all nuts, but they're somehow likable people.

As for the whole health issue - Oh yes, I definitely consider their yard a health issue especially all the dog crap. I've been through that before with the code enforcement office though. Actually, the whole reason I live in this house is because there was a health code issue at my old place that forced me to move immediately, and it was the code enforcement office that dealt with that whole issue. That landlord also had major zoning problems, and it turned out that he wasn't even zoned to rent that place to anyone other than a family member (I have no clue what kind of ordinance the township has about who can live in what place and whether or not they're family - talk about a ridiculous ordinance!).

In any case, it's still the code enforcement office that deals with health problems concerning property in the township whether it's private or commercial or whatever. Same office - same dumbasses. I don't know, maybe it's just too much variety of stuff for one office to deal with. I really think it would make more sense to break it up into more specific departments especially when the people that work there only seem to have knowledge of the ordinances and building codes - they're are more like engineers and don't seem to have other experience with health matters, etc. Or maybe they just don't give a crap.

Ok, about the township Garbage Inspection Police... where I used to live my landlord was pulling all kinds of code scams unknown for years to me and the other tenant. It turned out that he wasn't zoned to have more than one rental property in the building, and the one he was allowed to have was only zoned to be lived in by either himself or a family member. All this came to a head years after me and the other tenant started living there. The code enforcement office came over to inspect several times in order to figure out who was living there and our relationship to the landlord. Apparently, he was giving them a bunch of bull about who we were telling them that we were his niece and nephew! What also made me furious is that he also apparently told them at another time that I was his girlfriend and we both lived in my place... the guy was over 80 years old! Bad enough that he'd say something like that about me if he was reasonably youngish, but he was an old man making me look like some kind of weirdo or gold digger! Thankfully, the code enforcement office didn't believe any of his stories, but they had to prove it.

They finally were able to get him into court on his absolute refusal to provide garbage collection for us tenants. We BEGGED him to even let US pay the minuscule amount of money the yearly fee is to have our trash collected, but he refused on some sort of bizarre principle. Not providing garbage collection is a health ordinance violation, and a pretty serious one. For years me and the other tenant would sneak our trash out at night the day before collection days and mingle our trash with the trash of our neighbors. Neither of us had any way to get rid of our trash since both of us worked at buildings where the trash dumpsters were padlocked so we couldn't even take our trash to get rid of where we worked. All the neighborhood private dumpsters had padlocks on them too and probably because of our wacko landlord... he's probably had previous tenants go dump their trash in the private dumpsters of local small business properties that are required to have a dumpster.

In any case, in order to prove he wasn't providing us garbage collection and figuring out what we were doing with our trash they had what I call the township Garbage Inspection Police go out and collect the trash of our neighbors before the trash removal team got there and actually went through our trash for information on who owned it! It makes me sick to think of what personal stuff they were digging through in order to find out it was my trash... a tampon box, cleaned up barf from the dog puking on the carpet, coupons for free porn videos... who the hell knows what! For heaven's sake they could have just ASKED us what we were doing with our trash since we kept TELLING them we were desperate for them to make him provide us with garbage collection, and we were pissed off about the lies he was telling them about us... we were completely honest and free with information for them because we were on THEIR side! Yet they sent out the Garbage Inspection Police to search our trash when all they had to do was ASK us what we were doing with it... in fact, I'm sure we had already told them up front what we had to do with it since we weren't getting garbage collection from the landlord.

Yet another example of how crazy and stupid the code enforcement office is.

But it gets even MORE crazy. What made us have to move and move immediately was a serious health problem in the building... my clothes dryer vented into my attic instead of to the outside of the building. I never went up into the attic. When I first moved in I stored stuff up there that I never used and never went back up there again - I never had a reason to. During the last inspection I mentioned something about the attic, and the code enforcement office had NO IDEA that I HAD an attic! These dumbasses were doing all this building inspection without any floor plans of the building! They also missed an entire studio apartment that existed in the basement! There had been a tenant in there for awhile, but he trashed the place and skipped out in the middle of the night after not paying rent for a few months, and the landlord never spent the money to fix up the place to try renting again. Now really, how stupid can these people be to be doing all this inspecting to try to nail our landlord especially on zoning ordinances and they not only have no idea that I had an attic in my place but they missed an entire apartment in the basement??? How could they not realize that in a perfectly square building that they were missing all that ground floor space behind the commercial property on that floor? Did they just assume that all that space was a giant storage closet??? Idiots.

So anywho... when I mentioned the attic they had to go up and inspect it and FREAKED out. They discovered the dryer vent up there and the whole attic was covered in three inches of lint dust from the dryer which is highly combustible. The building essentially became a bomb because of that, and both me and the other tenant were court ordered to move within a week though they told us they'd be a lot happier if we stayed at motels until we moved so we weren't at least sleeping there at night. That's how I ended up living where I am now. Thank GOD I found this place so easily, my landlady is really nice, and though the house is hardly the greatest (it's really ancient and creaky with all kinds of various small problems) I pretty much like living here, and though it's expensive for me compared to comparable places it's very very reasonably priced. And I get trash collection and the dryer is vented outside the building... I made sure to check. LOL!

So yeah, within our township code enforcement office we have Lawn Maintenance Police as well as Garbage Inspection Police. I bet your code enforcement office has them, too.

On a side note... I'm so thrilled that the poop next door is gone that I want to jump in my pool except that it's cold as hell outside and now it looks like rain, and the pool water feels like glacial melt... brrrrr! Winter was weirdly warm, and now it looks like summer is going to be weirdly cold. It's more like the beginning of April this month than June.