Hey Teacher, Leave those kids alone!
Okay, I was wrong about the city harassing me in reference to my tree trimming, they were actually harrassing an entire district.
I was discussing the issue with someone who lives in my district yesterday, and she received a letter also. The problem I have with the letters is that this is ‘blanket’ code enforcement. In other words, everyone in the district is assumed guilty until proven innocent.
The letters are not specific about what trees you should trim. Obviously, for me, it is easy, I only have one tree on my boulevard. But what about people with multiple trees? Or what about people who don’t need their trees trimmed? Did they get letters to?
Code enforcement should be on complaint basis ONLY. Blanket code enforcement is silly, it is assuming that EVERYONE in the district is a irresponsible home owner that doesn’t have enough sense to know when to trim our trees. Trust me, the last place I would go to get advice about responsibility and common sense is from a city employee. That’s why complaint basis works best.
I’m getting sick and tired of the city treating it’s property tax payers and citizens like little kids. No wonder it costs so much to run Parks and Rec, they are busy bugging law abiding citizens instead trying to find ways to save us money.
Which brings me to another topic;
Rumor has it the Parks director said my ‘numbers were off’ in my letter to the editor about the bloated Parks budget. I used a $33 million dollar figure instead of $31 million dollar figure which I guess is the actual operating budget (which would bring the per acre maintenance cost down to aproximately $10,800 per acre instead of $11,500), which IMO is still too damn much. But I guess his biggest concern was that I didn’t breakdown how the money was spent. Who cares. An operating budget is an operating budget, I simplified it by using the amount of acres and simple division. It doesn’t matter how you ‘break it down’ at the end of the day $31 million is still being spent by Parks and Rec taking care of our parks. With that large of a budget that is obviously complex, don’t you think we can trim some fat? I think so, and that doesn’t change a damn thing.