You couldn't make it up dept. no.104: that's why property prices go down, isn't it?

[fpb]

The battle over a backyard boat restoration project appears to be headed to a Newport Beach court.

The Orange County Register says Dennis Holland has been restoring the century-old 72-foot boat in his backyard since 2006 and has angered some neighbors by keeping the ship on his property.

The City Council voted Tuesday to pursue a court order to get Holland to move the boat off the property.

Holland had a permit for the work but it expired in January. Talks to extend it broke down because Holland refused to give city officials an expected completion date for the project.

Holland's friend Don Rypinski, who has been trying to mediate the dispute, tells the Register they are hopeful an agreement can be reached before any legal action is taken.

Comments

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Apropos of something else, was briefly in Rome for the first time since 1983 last week-end. HOW GLORIOUS, HOW COULD I HAVE STAYED AWAY SO LONG.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Let me know a few weeks in advance next time and I'll arrange to be there.

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Definitely shall!

[eliskimo.livejournal.com]

I don't understand. What's "you can't make it up" about this?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I find it astounding that a city council should interfere with a man repairing his own boat in his own backyard. I wonder what would have happened to my father and his two friends, when they built one in their teens, if this kind of nosey parkering activities had been indulged by Rome city council in their time. And how much did this nonsense cost?

[eliskimo.livejournal.com]

Americans arguing with each other over city bylaws and what does or does not affect property values? Pretty par for the course.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

You don't get my point. My point is, what on God's green earth is a city council doing wasting time on this kind of crap? These things, of coure, happen anywhere, but in Italy, if they did, they would end up in court, with both factions taking their lawyers and paying their own costs. Who ever thought up the bright idea of encouraging people to waste public time and money by making this a council matter?

[eliskimo.livejournal.com]

I do understand your point, but it remains that this story doesn't surprise me in the least. In a country where the typical juvenile response to someone asking 'please don't do that' is 'it's a free country; you can't make me!' far too often the retaliation to to find someone who can make you.

I'm not saying that Mr. Holland is acting childishly. If anything, I think the neighbor (see my other comment) is the one acting childishly. Bylaws get enacted all the time in response to neighborhood complaints, both in the US and Canada. And often, after a few years, these bylaws are politely ignored (until someone else gets a bee in their bonnet, of course). In my city, there's a bylaw forbidding hanging wet clothes in backyards, on the grounds that they are an eyesore. However, I've been hanging up my laundry for 5 years and no one has said anything. Judging from the number of clotheslines I see in my neighborhood, it looks like a lot of my neighbors ignore the bylaw as well.

Americans using bylaws to quarrel with each other is nothing new.

[super-pan.livejournal.com]

Yes, you are correct that this is quite typical, and yet it still can be jaw dropping how these kind of things can go!

PS: Bylaws forbidding line drying clothes make me mad, because it basically forbids people from conserving energy! That is outrageous to me!

agreed

[dean steinlage (from livejournal.com)]

I have pleasant memories of my mother hanging clothes out in the yard. They smelled wonderful afterwards. My kids have been forbidden to aquire this memory.

The town I live in now won't allow my cat outside, but will allow me to do almost nothing about the rabbits eating the garden. And have mercy on me if my front yard tree droops to within 8ft of the sidewalk!

[eliskimo.livejournal.com]

I'll also add that I think the tensions in this community over this ship probably have as much to do with the downturn in the US economy as anything. The neighbors (especially, but not exclusively Mr. Lugo) probably are feeling frustrated and rather powerless in the face of sliding property values. They really can't do anything about the economy as a whole, but they can lash out at Mr. Holland.

Sad, but again, not surprising.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I still say that if Lugo had had to go to court himself, and pay his own shyster from his own funds, he would have been a good deal more neighbourly.

[eliskimo.livejournal.com]

I won't argue with you there! It's not neighborly at all.

My only point is that you listed this a "you can't make it up" item, but it's actually (and sadly) rather typical. The details may vary, but the general framework is well known on this continent. If a disgruntled party can find enough others to agree with him/her, getting City Hall to push a personal agenda works.

[eliskimo.livejournal.com]

A found a longer blog article about the story. A few salient points:

- this is not the first time Mr. Holland has had a boat in his yard
- the last one took 12 years, but that was in the 70s/early 80s
- the last one was in a different (but nearby) community
- the boat is not exactly in the backyard; you can see it from the street
- the author describes Mr. Holland's current neighborhood as full of "McMansions"
- the city bylaw Mr. Holland is apparently violating was enacted after he started this project
- the biggest tension seems to come from Mr. Holland's next door neighbor, Mr. Lugo
- Mr. Lugo contributed to the current councilman's election campaign
- Councilman Hill has been quoted in the LA Times saying, "A boat works construction yard should not be allowed in a residential district," which is a little different viewpoint from just "a man repairing his own boat."

http://theenterprisereport.typepad.com/newport/2011/01/sailing-into-a-storm-dennis-holland-and-the-shawnee-you-can-fight-city-hall-and-sometimes-you-should.html

[fpb.livejournal.com]

The whole story seems to me just full of folly. And it does not change my view that the Council should never have become a party to the matter, to find out that the Councilman in question is a buddy of the litigant in chief.

[elegant-bonfire.livejournal.com]

City councils and city commissions are frequently the offices in charge of zoning disputes, which this probably falls under. If you live in a neighborhood zoned residential only, it's fine to repair your car in your own driveway or garage. But if you put out a sign advertising auto repair, you can expect a visit from a city official reminding you that it's not a commercially zoned area, and the sign has to come down.

And a 72 foot boat is pretty damn big--that wouldn't even fit in any of the backyards in my neighborhood, not to mention it's probably on a boat trailer or something, and sitting even higher up. Orange County is right on the coast, seems to me there should be somewhere where the guy could rent a dry dock space pretty cheaply to keep the boat while he's working on it.