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04/25/2005: "Taking on the MAn"
Short Version: On January 4th, I received a “high weeds” ticket, dated August 10th. I filed for a hearing, which was granted. Today, April 22nd, I attended said hearing and the ticket was dismissed. I was urged to “keep my property cleaner.”
Lesson: appeal these tickets knowing that the chief scrivener is going to say annoying, challenging things in the hopes that you’ll blow up at him. Don’t. Grit your teeth, let the ticket get dismissed, and come home and write about it.
Long, Long Version: On January 4th, we arrived home from vacation to find a ticket in the mail. Stamped with a “Weeds exceed 10 inches,” there was no other information on the ticket. Was it my flowerbed? My hedges? My side yard? My backyard?
Even more amazing was that the ticket was dated August 10th but it was filed (and mailed) on January 3rd.
I called the department of finance twice. Both times I was told that I needed to file for a hearing. The folks who answered the phone were rude, with one man going so far as to tell me that “unless I knew someone, I would have to come to the hearing. And if I did know someone, he didn’t want to know about it.”
I then called Jannie Blackwell’s office. Each time I’ve called her office, the same thing happens. An excessively polite person tells me that my concern is so-and-sos department and that they will call me back. When I didn’t hear anything for a few days, I called back and ask specifically for that person. He listens to me, tells me he’ll look into it, and I never hear from him again. Nice.
I call all of the at-large reps and tell them the story of the ticket. The woman who handles these calls in Frank Rizzo’s office might be the best in the city at this sort of thing, because the next day I get a call from a police officer, who tells me that she looked into it (as a favor) and that because the ticket was issued by L& I, there is nothing she can do.
Next, I finally manage to get a supervisor for the division who wrote the ticket, who tells me that all he can do is send the person back out to look at the property. I ask him why there was such a delay in handling the ticket and he has no answer. I ask him how I can possibly document the state of my yard in August and he has no answer. He never calls me back.
Later in January, I receive notice for the hearing. It’s a day that the city government is closed.
Several weeks later, I receive a correction notice stating the city is closed that day and that my hearing has been rescheduled.
Today, Colin (my ten month old son) and I head off to the hearing. It’s at Broad and Chestnut, on the fourth floor. We arrive early, sign in, and take a seat. After a wait of maybe ten minutes, the chief scrivener arrives and takes us into his office.
He asks me about the ticket.
I tell him that we didn’t receive the ticket until January and that it was written in August.
He tells me that they’re behind on the mailing.
I reply by telling him that it was actually FILED in January, as it states on the ticket, and mailed the next day.
He blinks and then asks me about the property.
I tell him that we basically don’t have a yard, just a flowerbed, a bricked in side yard (3’X10’) and about a fifth of a hedged area in the spaced adjoining my neighbor’s property. In each of these spaces, I can’t say positively that there wasn’t a single wild onion or other weed, but that generally, the property is kept quite neat.
I open my laptop where I have assembled a power point presentation containing a number of pictures of my property, all of which were taken over the past few days. He asks about the hedges, asks if they’re kept clean and well-cut. I reply affirmatively.
After looking at the pictures, he states that the officer must have seen something.
I’m puzzled. This is the same officer who took four months to file the ticket and who did not give a single detail of the so-called violation.
He states that he will dismiss the ticket but I need to take better care of my property.
I pause. I ask if there is anything I can do to deal with tickets issued four months after the violation.
He tells me to keep my property CLEANER. (here's where I thought about how much $25 is worth to me- do I want to blow up or do I want to say "yessir" and walk out. Having my son with me influenced my decision in a big way.)
I’ve won at this point, so I say thank you, and I leave.
I rarely feel this crappy when I win.
I sign the paper stating that the ticket has been dismissed and depart.
Some thoughts:
Who is to judge what makes a “clean” property? Are there “clean” plants and “messy” plants? Is my rose bush too high, my ivy too wild?
Why is it okay for a four month delay between the issuance of the violation and the filing of the violation to occur? How do you deal with it? Looking at the various nonsensical things they can write tickets for, I’m struck by the number of items that would be very hard to prove (or disprove.) My only thought is to try and take a picture once every few weeks to show the state of my property and hope that L&I doesn’t have it in for me. Shouldn't there be a regulation regarding the amount of time that can elapse between the date of the citation and the time it is filed?
I stay at home taking care of my son and writing my dissertation. I had the time to travel downtown and fight the ticket. How many tickets are written, and folks pay as it’s not worth the time/tokens/parking to ask for a hearing? How many tickets are of the utterly subjective variety, where an officer can declare that your flowers are over ten inches tall and therefore a violation? Are these tickets a form of back-door taxation, a cynical form of fundraising?
Anyone who lives in this neighborhood could assemble a list of truly egregious violations. There are houses that have been left abandoned, lots which are overgrown, and waste pipes that go unfixed, causing a cave-in every few months. There are student rentals that haven’t been fixed in decades and landlords that do crappy renovations as quickly as possible. I suppose there isn’t any way of knowing whether L&I goes after these folks, but I remain annoyed that they spend any time at all writing tickets for high weeds when such properties continue to exist.