"[TEXAS] 'I believe controlling the color you paint your house is basically profiling the Hispanic community,' said Elizabeth Villafranca, whose family owns a Mexican restaurant in Farmers Branch. 'We all know who paints their homes tropical colors.' "
One of my neighbors painted his house in a color that's completely absurd for the surroundings, but after many years of practice, I've perfected a unique skill: I don't look. It's a tough job, but somebody's gotta do it.
They tried to pass a county ordinance that specified paint color had to be 'approved'. No definition of an 'approved' color was included, left up to the building inspector. There were a lot of other Ayatollah restrictions included. It was put were the sun doesn't shine by our county attorney. Not satisfied with that, they hired a consultant attorney who told them "put it where the sun don't shine".
My town's been wrestling with a good idea for years, but they can't quite figure out how to implement it. Example: An recently deceased neighbor of mine had (because she's dead) a gorgeous sycamore in her yard. She wanted it removed. As she explained it, "I love the tree, I love the shade, but a couple times a year, it drops all this bark." It wasn't a matter of cleaning up the bark. Her lawn mowing guys cleaned it up nicely. Rather, she was convinced the tree was sick. She consulted several tree companies, and someone from a tree preservation group, and she was convinced that they were all lying when they said the sycamore was behaving normally. So, she wanted it gone. She was difficult to talk to, so I never bothered to ask if she though the "disease" might spread to her house, which would then shed its shingles & siding.
Anyway, the town's trying to figure out a way to (bad word) require that homeowners at least sit through a 20 minute meeting with a tree authority (on town payroll) before taking down a tree for the wrong reasons. The town would have no authority to stop homeowners from removing a tree. They just want an opportunity to review the information that may have been provided by someone who makes money removing trees.
I like the idea, but it never gets very far at town board meetings.
on 10/11/2007 9:51 AM JoeSpareBedroom said the following:
Where I used to live, there was a historical zone from the 1700s where many historical US Revolutionary War events happened. The people living in this area could not have exposed ACs, TV antennas, satellite dishes, vinyl siding, Christmas lights other than a single candle in the windows, and a restriction on any house color other than those available in the late 1700s. One homeowner, in protest, painted his house in various shades of purple. It looked kinda cute, like a building that belonged in Disney World. I don't know what the result of the protest was since I moved away before the final decision was made.
They're very good at crushing garages, too, as I learned during the 1993 ice storm here, when the sycamore at my previous house tossed a telephone pole-size branch onto my neighbor's property. His freestanding garage looked like a giant foot stomped it. The structure needed to be replaced anyway, so my neighbor was quite pleased.
Interestingly, this report appears in the Houston Chronicle, the hometown paper of a city that has no zoning. We work out problems like this amongst ourselves.
If someone wants to paint their house black or open a bodega in a residential area, they are simply killed.
Best plan I've head yet! I doubt anyone cares what you do out in the middle of nowhere, but if you want to live in a neighborhood, it is essential that you be a good neighbor. That excludes doing stupid things that bring down everyones property values. This smacks of "Block Busting", ( the practice of moving into a desirable area and doing things to drive down property values for the purpose of installing an ethnic group.) I have an idea, if you don't like how we do things here go back to Mexico or wherever you came from, Racist my ass.
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Well, we don't have a LOT of killing, so I guess things work out okay. I mean, look at Washington, D.C. They HAVE zoning and you have to step over the bodies littering the streets!
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