But common sense doesn't work sometimes, at least not in Lake Worth. It would be interesting to know how this happened in the first place--how an owner could just change the legal address of his house from Wright Drive to 6th Avenue South in order to dump a shed on the front lawn. How did he get a permit based on a false legal address? The Property Appraiser has it as 535 Wright Drive. The Deed has it on Wright Drive. But the city allowed the owner to use a different address? Is this competence? Because the City royally screwed up, this is a note from ROLO president, Robert Waples:
Dear Neighbors,
We got a response from the City and Commission that the "loop"hole in our city code is going to be addressed and taken care of on order to not allow the issue with the shed in the front yard to happen again.
Currently if anyone applies and the issue comes up again while the language is being drafted, the request will be denied and hopefully in the August meetings planning and zoning will come up with the appropriate language and it will be passed by the commission.
As far as 535 Wright goes, the shed is legal based on the current code and will have to remain.
We want to thank the City and Commission for acting swiftly in this issue to ensure that this does not happen again any where in the City of Lake Worth as well as in the Residences of Lake Osborne,
Sincerely,
--
ROLO Residences of Lake Osborne
Proudly serving the Residents
Of Lake Osborne
........................
The City is responsible for this disgusting and inappropriate situation that brings down a residential neighborhood. The City should force the owner to plant trees to hide it all from the blight they caused.
Katie Mcgiiveron, vice president of Rolo here.
ReplyDeleteWhat a mess. And it is a mess because of poorly written code laws that employees have allowed to remain on our books. I fully believe that this owner had guidance from code employees on how to make this mess happen. No normal person would know how to say "well because of an obscure screw up in our codes, what is clearly my side yard is now called my front yard."
The same code dept that thinks it's OK to fine my elderly neighbors for putting a palm frond out twelve hours too soon helped to create this crap hole that our neighborhood and everyone passing by on 6th Ave. south gets to see.I lay this WHOLE MESS at the feet of William Waters and the rest of the code employees that make their living from our pockets.
City employee Rodney Patrick assured me that a text amendment to change what allowed this to happen is going to be put in front of our Commission as soon as possible.
All week I have tried to get in touch with district one Commissioner Scott Maxwell about this issue. His many phone mailboxes are usually full so I even made a trip down to city hall and left a message with the Commission secretary Silvania, to please call me.
NOTHING ! Thanks for letting my neighborhood blow in the wind, Commissioner.
What I find a little strange here is, if it is the case, the owner used fraudulent address for the permit application for the shed. That should be grounds for a proactive code department to rescind the permit and require the owner to resubmit. There is no loop hole. This is similar to the huge garage built on the corner of North D and 17th Ave. There are ordinances or zoning rules that were broken here.
ReplyDeleteIf everyone wants to complain why don't you just go to a magistrate meeting and see all the good code does good for the community. I highly doubt any of the Officers have personal vendettas against anyone there just doing their job and if someone was taken to court incorrectly the case would be thrown out. I submitted a complaint to code a little while back because my neighbors property were full of trash, broken fences, the landscape was all dead, there was even mops in the trees and on top of that they were renting it without one of those business licenses. The shorter code guy called me soon after I put the complaint in and assured me it would be taken care of. Within a few months not only did the property I complain on take a 180 but the whole block improved! I guess he spoke to every house owner around me in efforts to help. I take everyone's negative feelings against our code department with a grain of salt, all I've seen is results and cooperation from them. thank you code.
ReplyDeleteYou're awfully touchy @ 2:47--no one is negative about our code officers. We are NEGATIVE about the handling of this particular situation. If you lived next door to it, would you be happy?
ReplyDeleteif you think they could just rescind it wouldn't they? what do they have to lose or gain from it? I put in a permit to have install a fence it had to go to a billion different departments before i got it back and took months! the code dept. had nothing to do with it, it was building' and zoning who delt with it. and at the end of the day i couldn't even put it up. code just enforces what the ordnances say they don't make them up
ReplyDeleteIm sorry to be on a rant im just frustrated when people point fingers at others. I know I wouldn't want to live next to Wright Drive but at the end of the day what can we do? Plus this whole HH thing is ridiculous and that's upsetting me too, I love my beach and it tears me up that we might loose it to a greedy corporation =( I love reading your blog Lynn and the diversity of it. I appreciate you having this for us.
ReplyDeleteThanks, 3:01--it beats getting beat-up daily by certain politicos who comment here occasionally.
ReplyDeletewhat does the so called front look like? what a mess!
ReplyDelete