City must clean up its own act first
How did city services come up with the unbelievable fine of $347,000 for trimming trees without a permit (“Pruning leaves a fine mess,” Friday)?
How about this. Instead of assessing homeowners who are trying to maintain their property, the city should first clean up its own house by filling in the potholes and repairing all the cracked sidewalks in the city. Who is in charge of these repairs, and to whom do I report them?
ROSEMARY KLEM
Glendale
Apologies deserved for over-regulation
I, for the most part, agree with both Allen Brandstater and Frederick W. Croft (“Officials should ‘go climb a tree,’” and “Rights of property owner lost in debate,” Mailbag, Oct. 19) in their sentiments regarding the over-regulation and loss of private property rights in Glendale.
But we have to face the fact that this is apparently what the citizens of Glendale want and what they voted for in the last election. They want big brother to tell us what we can do with our property, what we can plant on our property, where we can smoke, whose views we have to protect, when we can replace our windows and what windows we can replace them with (the last time I wrote about this I got a response from some homeowners association vigilante telling us how vinyl windows cause global warming, etc. — yawn).
I do believe that people should keep up and improve their property and not let it become an eyesore, but if in doing so we have to jump through a million hoops and wind our way through the maze of the permitting bureaucracy, that is truly overbearing and unjust.
Just like paying more than $300,000 for pruning — not removing, mind you — some trees is totally out of whack.
I sometimes wonder where all these folks were when south Glendale was practically razed back in the ’80s and ’90s. Were they whining up a storm and blitzing City Council meetings when the hundreds of apartments and condos were being built? Were they concerned about south Glendale residents losing their views? I doubt it. What’s next, a ban on tree houses? I do not agree with Brandstater’s call to have the city arborist apologize, be fired or go climb a tree, although he or she would probably enjoy that last one.
That city employee was just doing their job in enforcing this draconian law, a law desired by some overzealous community members and the City Council.
