Yeah! We Won One! Kinda?

Good on you[s], Ladies!

Wow, what a present supplies.

I wouldn't declare victory until the fence is GONE.

I'm not really fixated on the Gaul fence as much as I am about the incompetency on display at L&I/Streets. In a battle of low-SAT scores, Streets usually wins. I get better responses when I argue with L&I about something. But Streets is so awful that they actively flip the bird at community groups. They won't show up to talk to neighbors at community meetings and help educate the public, whereas L&I will [not often, but they do show up sometimes]. You may get one of their brass to turn up IF you know someone who is a relative of a Streets employee; but you're way better off going to City Council to get Streets to do something rather than going to Streets itself.

I'm not surprised about the L&I/Streets finger pointing. At all.

What's even better is that when L&I and Streets DO happen to do their job correctly, another layer of disappointment is the City Law Department which drops prosecutions. It would make much more sense for L&I and Streets to have their own legal pools and only send over the big complicated messes to City Law.

All too often, those who are REAL problems in the neighborhood (like slumlords and abandoned property owners), they win EVEN if they get violation notices out the wazoo by L&I. Their cases never get dispensated because all too often if you dodge the first round of service, the chances that the Law Department will give up go way up.

The fence case is just a very simple example of City red tape. Since the owner has the property up for sale, all sorts of things can happen. The owner can ignore it, it can go to City Law for the fine, and the owner could continue all the way to a default judgment.

Would that matter? If the buyer of this property is paying cash, then no. Even if a buyer is paying via mortgage, only a zealous title company would know to look for issues that haven't yet resulted in a City lien put against a property. A home inspector from the buyer would more likely be interested in the house vs. the side yard, etc.

If this house doesn't sell in about 9 months though and the NOV goes all the way to a judgment + lien put on, it may turn up and trigger a buyer's contingency if the title company locates the lien or the preacipe for one when they search Lexis.

We often look to the PPD and to our politicos for issues related to crime and blight, but all to often, the folks who are letting us down the MOST and have the most direct involvement in preserving blight and exacerbating it is L&I, Streets and the City Law Department because of their actions, or inaction, as the case may be.

But on the other hand, all this bad publicity might motivate the owner to remove the fence. But given that the owner (or someone) living in the house told Juliana "we got a permit;" I have reservations.

so the SUVs will be parked on the sidewalk when the fence is removed. yay us?

not if the law is enforced