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Prof. Bainbride- Why I am a small I Libertarian (made me laugh)

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Ned Hamford:
Why I am a Small l Libertarian
http://www.professorbainbridge.com/2007/09/why-i-am-a-smal.html
My wife and I wanted to put an addition on our house here in the City of Los Angeles. Our general contractor told us that the first thing we had to do was get up-to-date zoning and property information from the Building Pemits Department. He recommended that we hire a "fixer" who was used to dealing with the bureaucracy. That was 2 months ago. Today, we were informed by the City zoning department that they could not give us the necessary zoning information ... because, according to zoning records, our house does not exist! On top of which, the zoning folks also had no record of the street on which we live.

I was speechless until it occurred to me to ask why, if our house doesn't exist, we have to pay property taxes and so on. The answer? "That's another department." Back to being speechless. I then recovered enough to ask what we had to do to have the existence of our house established, which I thought would be a simple process - after all, you can see it on Google Earth. I was told we would first have to have a hearing to determine whether the street that runs in front of our house is a public street or private road. Given the backlog, it would be about a year before that process could be completed. Then we'd have to have another hearing to establish the existence of our house. Then we'd have to apply for a building permit, geological inspection, etcetera etcetera. At which point, I gave up in despair. After all, I was starting to have visions of being told that we'd have to tear our house down because it doesn't exist, which was getting kind of metaphysical. Anyway, goodbye addition.

True story.

Update: The interest in this story prompts me to relate another of my adventures with LA bureaucracy. I live in the Hollywood Hills. When the houses on our block were built back in the 1930s, the city sewer was not extended up the street. To connect the houses, the builder(s) ran an "unofficial" 4 inch clay pipe under our properties down to where it could be patched into the city line. By the late 1990s, the pipe was failing and causing all sorts of problems. In 2, we went to the City and asked to have a proper City sewer line ran up our block to which we could connect. They agreed. We could have our line ... in 2020! So we had a fundraiser for our city councilman. He asked what he could do for us. We told him about the sewer. A couple of days later, one of his aides called with good news. We had been bumped up. To 2018. So much for campaign finance corrupting politicians, eh?

At this point, we all clubbed together (overcoming an interesting holdout problem along the way) and ran a new private line.

Between these two episodes, it's been quite a ride with the City of LA.

And boy would I like to get my hands on our builder! Unfortunately, he's long since met his maker.

DustinD:
So what happens if you build an addition to a house that has funny paperwork issues? Would they have to prove your house and street/private road exist before going after you?

grampster:
How can you build onto something that does not exist.  If you get an inquiry, just tell them they must be mistaken, you are a figment of their imagination.

The Rabbi:

--- Quote from: grampster on September 16, 2007, 04:31:28 PM ---How can you build onto something that does not exist.  If you get an inquiry, just tell them they must be mistaken, you are a figment of their imagination.
In LA that is quite believable.

Balog:
Only the permissiony part of the .gov doubts you exist. The punishy part believes in you.

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