Paramilitary Code Enforcement
When [building] code enforcement goes a-roaming, with guns and backup, what’s it really after?
That was howThe North Coast Journal’s Heidi Walters opened her article Fear In The Hills back in April. The article covered an incident back in February when:
. . . a convoy of Sheriff’s deputies and a county code enforcement officer wandered up and down the private roads and into yards, surprising the rural residents of homesteads scattered among the trees.
They were armed with flak jackets and carried automatic weapons and marched all over people’s property like they were some Nazi gestapo or Soviet government troops, storming all over the southern end of Humboldt County.
You could make the argument that the whole fracas started a month earlier when code enforcement got into it with some residents of a place locals call Yee Haw up near Trinidad, who live in what they call “free form” houses. Naturally, the hard workin’ bureaucrats saw it as their business to “get the buildings, water and sewer systems permitted and up to county codes.” In fact, they issued them an eviction notice. (North Coast Journal Codes, Damned Codes, Feb. 28, 2008)
Of course, the gestapo had its reasons. Like all good bureaucracies, its really looking out for its citizens. In an article published on March 25th, in the Redwood Times Claude Young of the Administrative Code Compliance section of the County Counsel’s office explained that “bringing houses into compliance with building laws will stabilize property values.” And of naturally, “the county will have to begin enforcing the new fire safety standards developed in the wake of the San Diego fires.”
Ever notice how there’s never any lack of creativity when it comes to a bureacracy finding reasons to justify their jobs and their budgets, or ways to spend your money for you?
Down in the Shelter Cove Development Area the County Planning Commission found a really nifty way to pick new builder’s pockets by making it nearly impossible to meet the off road parking requirement without paving the county’s road right of way adjacent to your property — at your expense, of course. If you do that, you’re almost guaranteed to meet the parking requirement even if the right of way isn’t technically big enough to do so. But if you try to meet the requirement by putting all the parking on your property, the Planning Department is very open about the fact that they’re “very strict” when it comes to measuring spaces.
Now, as a professional builder I fully understand the need for reasonable rules and regulations that ensure that I and others in the profession build you a safe and quality structure. But we’ve gone way beyond that. Building codes and inspection requirements are now more about turf protection and job justification than they are your safety or my quality of workmanship.
This point was made very well twenty years ago when Strong-Tie lobbied the (then) UBC over the improved safety of its connection hardware over the old toe-nailing method. Fire departments all over the country went ballistic. Metal heats much faster than wood. It gets so hot, in fact, that it burns the ends of the frames off, destabilizing the structure must faster than nails driven into wood that are therefore protected from the heat of the fire by the wood. Well, the firemen lost. And many good firemen lost their lives as fire science experts struggled to come up with new methods of dealing with buildings constructed using these metal joist fasteners that are now literally the standard in the building industry.
Now this isn’t to say that all the regulations and codes are bad. Of course they’re not. Like most things, it’s a mix of good honest public servants trying to do their best for society and greed and turf driven people and corporations who are only out for themselves.
In any event, the results of this rather crass attempt to raise money for the county by harassing citizens who are harming no one has led the Board of Supervisors to create a task force that’s held a number of hearings on the issue. In fact, as of today, according to the Eureka Reporter, they’re still holding hearings.
Hopefully cooler heads will prevail and we’ll get back to where we were a few years ago: Building officials and code enforcers and building professionals all on the same page, trying to design and build you the best, safest building we can.
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