Beautiful White Picket Fence Threatens Democracy In CA

 

From The Orange County Register: The hearing officer could not find a loophole that would let Marlem and Helen Mason keep their white picket fence.
I wrote about the Masons' plight two weeks ago. In 2000, Marlem finally installed the iconic fence he'd promised Helen when they married in 1961. It runs 24 feet down the side of their immaculate front yard on Acacia Avenue in Garden Grove. But it is between four and eight inches higher than city code allows. It sat there 11 years – was even in place when the city gave the Masons a home-beautification award – before a neighbor who is in a long-running dispute with the elderly couple dimed them out.
The city issued warnings, then a citation. The hearing before independent hearing officer Ray Rodriguez was held Aug. 2. The Masons learned of his ruling last week. Rodriguez told me he looked at the history of the municipal code. On the surface, the Masons had a shot because the code was reformatted in 2009, meaning their fence might be grandfathered in. But as it turned out the relevant code section was in place at least as far back as 1991....
For now, Marlem said, he's going to do nothing. He said he's seen the city sit on violations for years and not follow up with enforcement. That wouldn't be my choice, but he's lived longer than I and seems to have a moral code I wouldn't dare try and talk him into straying from. He sent me a poem and advised me to "read and reread" frequently. It starts, "If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs ..." Kipling. On Marlem's advice, I tacked it next to my computer.  http://www.ocregister.com/articles/city-368590-fence-code.html
It's cases like this that make people angry at government.  You have a pissed off person who sics the government on this elderly couple and their beautiful white picket fence.  Then the government decides that it has to act because they are the government.  Instead of telling the pissed off person to go to hell, they instead go into bureaucratic attack mode and say the white picket fence is illegal.
I hope the city in this case drops the case and decide to look the other way but I don't they will.  They'll probably fine the couple or send in city workers and take down the fence.
Another reason to hate government.