We had a deal like that a few year back. Had a compe***ion car parked in the back yard. Town p***ed and ordenience saying all vehicles had to be parked on a permanent surface. Guess they wanted everyone to put in a slab or extra paving so you would need to get a building permit and pay your 40 bucks. Fellow from the town came around and sid he was going to cite me as he observed the car was not parked in complience with the ord. I told him to be a bit more astute with his observation. I put two treated 2 12 foot 2x10's down under the tires. He said it wasn't parked on a paved surface. I asked him to read me where in the ord. it said paved. Because what it said was permanent surface, He said wood wasn't permanent. I said it's rated for 30 years of ground contact. I said 3 decades sounds pretty permanent to me, probably be here long after me and the car are gone, and you're retired. He got in his car and left, haven't seen him since.
Although I agree with everything you said, the coffin is not eventual. There are enough of us now than ever before and if we could only come together and educate each other on how to PROPERLY engage government and politicians, then bad press would be irrelavant. we need to vote in all elections ESPECIALLY LOCAL ONES. They happen every year on election day. Learn where the candidates stand. When some new bogus law or ordinance is proposed, GET INVOLVED. Don't waste time with email or worthless pe***ions that you see online. Write letters and make phone calls: http://www.abor.asu.edu/6_gov_legislative/contacts.html although it is a page for Arizona it counts for all of us. federal,state, and local. You international guys ?? Laws aren't made to be broken, they're made to be repealed. The more technology we have to distract us, the more we forget that we ARE the government and we do have the power. health care providers, ill-informed environmentalist groups, and dirty industry have lobbyists working full time against us, but we outnumber them. I write letters all the time to these s***bags in charge...do you?
"Call the city's code enforcement guy and talk to him." Good advice. If the officer is reasonable, you may be able to come up with a reasonable solution to keep both of you happy. If the guy think's he is God and has made it his life's mission to stamp out s***bags like you, you'll know what you are up against. I've had both types for home inspectors. If he's a *****, scurting around the laws like has been advised will just piss him off and have him looking for additional violations or send in other inspectors. There's no way most of us city folk could pull off having a few parts cars or non-runners on your property in the city. That's why I split rent on a two car garage with a friend so we have some place to store our parts and projects. Is it convenient - NO. Is it cheap - NO at $75 a month, but it solves the problem. When I have brought home cars to part out, I've let my neighbors know the plan (i.e. will be gone in a week) and put a car cover on them to avoid problems. See if you can find out which neighbor is upset and try to talk to them about your plans. If they know the situation is temporary, their at***ude might be different than if they think you're starting your own s**** yard next to them. The city really has better things to do than get in the middle of a fight between neighbors.
We did this recently on my daughter's car ('98 Contour). She wrecked it and it looked terrible, knocking the whole left front suspension off. I called around to let the developer, city code and police dept know that it would be sitting a couple of weeks to a month while we fixed it. Everyone was cool. And the neighbor lady who called in about my "non-running" cars before, I made a special effort to go out of my way to let her know that the we would have the car going in a couple of weeks maybe amonth depending on the weather. My son (mostly) and I (very little but holding things and give specs and advice) replaced the whole front corner, strut, knuckle, lower control arm, CV drive axle, hub, inner and outer tie rod, aligned it and got it back to my daughter in a just over two weeks. We did it all out on the pad beside the house next to the garage because thats where the rollback dumped it off. I kept my end of the deal, and actually got a "respect" call from code for how quickly we got it done. It drives like it always did. All we had to set was the thrust angle and toe in on that side, nothing else is adjustable and fortunately the K-frame and strut tower was OK. She's back on wheels. A little bit of cooperation can get you alot of leeway. And being neat about it, like putting things away that look like piles of junk help too.
I got a letter yesterday, about the non-tagged vehicles(s) in my driveway. Ten days to remove said vehicles or we will put a lean against your property. One phone call, and its done. I did have to push the truck around the corner of the house, but once it runs again and I get rid of it, all gone. But all WERE on a permanent surface. moving them to the dirt actually made me ok by them. He confirmed that he won't get out of his car to inspect, if its not in plain sight, no mo violation.
Impalabuilder, Good points, just remember that complacency is exactly what "the man" wants. Sitting back and thinking there's too many of us and we're too big for the government to shut us down isn't the correct frame of mind. "Pride is a fool's fortress" as they say. I'm not trying to hijack this thread and turn it into an anti-government rant but we now have an administration that's appointing an avowed So******t (Carol Browner) to the position of Climate Change Czar. What do you think her opinion of back yard hot rod building is? Pretty soon the EPA is going to ban regular guys from painting stuff in their garages. You'll have to be a lisenced body shop just to buy paint. Somewhere in the UK (I think) if you build a hot rod from scratch you have to have it inspected and certified by a structural engineer. (Not an entirely bad idea) the point is I want as little involvement with the government be it local, state, or federal as possible.
We already have some of those shenanegans going on. A guy I know got a great deal on a 427 Cobra kit car, complete with a center oiler 427 4-speed. It wasn't put all together yet, but he called to try to ***le it and it seems that the company that made the car went out of business when CS got a burr under his saddle, and there was no "origination number certificate" that was valid for it. He would have had to build it p*** 2003 model emmisions and it would have been a 2003 model ***le and subject to emmision inspection for the rest of its life. He resold it to a guy in ****stan and sneaked it onto a container of fabric to get it out of the country. Unreal.
that's what I mean...if WE don't get involved then we are sitting back and we have no voice at all. Sorry for hijacking the thread but I try to spread the word as much as possible.
The Jalopy Journal
