I Earned My Keep Today
When I got home from work today, I noticed a pink piece of paper stuck in my door. "What could that be," I wondered. I supposed it was an ad for pet sitting or a yard sale or some such thing. To my horror, it was a "Housing Notice of Non-Compliance." It stated that I was violating a county ordinance because my grass was too high. Well, I mowed the grass about a week ago, so you can imagine that it was ready to be worked on again, but it wasn't disgraceful or anything. In fact, my yard looked exactly like everyone else's yard in the neighborhood--except for one house. I suspect we all got pink notices in our doors today because my neighbor's grass was up to my chest. The inspector must have wanted to make a point to the entire neighborhood instead of just the obvious offender.
So what was supposed to be my Saturday project turned into my Friday project. I don't really know if anyone else in the neighborhood got a pink notice, but I suspect they did, because several of us were out mowing at the same time, and we normally all save this chore for the weekend. But I think of it as a neighborhood bonding experience. The naughty children were reprimanded, and now we have paid our dues.
So anyway, I mowed the front and back yards (I was able to start the mower on my own!!!!), pulled a few weeds, and cleaned out my cat's litter box. I'd say that's pretty impressive for a Friday evening after a long day of work. I guess since I did all my work this evening, I get to play all day tomorrow. So all's well that ends well.
Too bad I don't have an Ale-8-One...
posted by Katie @ Frugal Femina @ 6:47 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
On the ultimate inconvenience scale, this does not get past a 3 or a 4, tops (though scaring people into doing work in their yards on a night they were not planning to do so is at least a little bit creepy to me). But, what the freaking heck??!
First, the teacher cannot simply lecture everyone about what that one kid did and expect us to take her seriously. "Oh, okay, you're right, I shouldn't have thrown the rotten tomato against the wall, even though I actually didn't..." This is not high school, and it didn't work in high school anyway.
Second, I want someone to show me the city ordinance that defines how high the grass has to be and which is such a low definition that one week of growth is "too high." There are two possible results of this quest for the ordinance; let's look at them both:
a. There is no such ordinance. Our yard is clearly not really out-of-code. If this is the case, then our tax dollars are paying someone to go around to people's houses and harrass them with notices that they are breaking laws when they really aren't. Is it not obvious what is wrong with this?
b. Let's say that my yard really was out-of-code. So what? We actually have a city code, and government employees actually go around enforcing that code, which tells homeowners they have to mow their lawns once a week in the summer or else? Is this not busybodydom at its worst?
Third, the freaking people who aren't mowing their yard appear to be gone. They weren't even present to hear/read your little lecture about unmowed grass. If the city's agenst spent less time taping absurd notices on citizen's doors and more time just looking around the neighborhood, they would quickly ascertain where the problem is, and could respond accordingly.
But, leave it to my dear wife to turn lemons into lemonade. I'm glad you got the yard work out of the way, sweetie. That's a healthy way to look at it.
Sounds perfectly reasonable to me, eh?
The notice of non-compliance should have on it the code section of the county ordinance you were cited as violating. A cursory look at the online version of the Clarke County codes (available here) did not turn up any specific code section dealing with the height of lawn grass. There is probably some key word combination I didn't think of, but 'lawn', 'height', 'yard', or 'grass' do not seem to work for finding this code section.
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