Thursday, June 23, 2011

Small Towns

Yesterday was not a great day around here. It was incredibly humid. I'm on the 3rd day of my diet, which is never pretty. About mid-morning, I noticed a truck parked in front of our home. Someone was inspecting our property. She walked up on the front porch and I opened the door. The woman was from the city. They was not take down our two smaller trees and trim another huge maple. She wanted me to sign a form, giving the city permission. I told her that I wanted to speak with Mike about it before making a decision. The two smaller trees are the trees that my little girls love to climb. The branches begin fairly low to the ground and they are spaced perfectly for small girls. These trees also shade the master bedroom and the older girls' bedroom.

While I was at the store, another city inspector arrived. We put up our 48"x18' pool a month ago. Three sides of our yard are fenced. We also remove the ladder when the pool is not in use. The city stated that we needed a building permit ($15) to install the pool. They want 4' high fencing and self-locking gates around the entire property. We will need to get a separate building permit to put up the additional fencing. I do understand why we are supposed to have the pool fenced in. There are 6 taller pools on the block that do not have any fencing, but that is beside the point. What I don't understand is why we need a building permit to put up an inflatable pool. It is up for about 90 days and is nothing is dug. The swing set required a more permanent installation. We dug holes and poured cement to anchor it to the ground. Seems a little strange to me.

The building permit inspector stated that the city received an anonymous report about our pool. I don't understand the amount of calls to the city and police in this community. My neighbors on each side have had the police at their home a dozen times each this summer. Thankfully, we haven't had any. Are all small towns so "call the authorities" crazy? Is it because there aren't many things to do, so people need to create some excitement?

We lowered the pool to 28" so that we are within the legal height requirements until I can scrape up the money to purchase the remaining privacy fence. Now the pool is low enough for a two year old to fall into if he hangs over the edge. I'm feeling much less secure about the pool now, but we're legal.

I think I'm ready to move now.

2 comments:

Barb the Evil Genius said...

Someone called our landlord when we put our garbage out before 5 PM one Sunday. Fortunately our landlord didn't particularly care. The worst was an anonymous letter we got chastising us for not having a nice enough yard, while Mr. BTEG was out of work. Some people are just nasty.

The regulations for pools are weird most everywhere.

Karen said...

Ugh! What a nasty thing for someone to do. They made a judgment about your family without having any facts. I hate anonymous complaints. Anonymous letters and complaints just make people defensive. It's so easy to walk up to someone's door and talk to them. Each person can pick up on non-verbal communication and it can almost always be resolved in a civil, cooperative manner.