It seems code enforcement in Sacramento isn’t as exciting as fighting the graywater bandits of Humboldt County. Code enforcers in California’s capital city must be desperate for work. From the Sac Bee:
Sacramento city officials on Wednesday admitted their code enforcement policies may not be drought-friendly, and said they won’t fine the couple featured in Wednesday’s Bee who let their front lawn die to save water.
The story prompted a torrent of outrage from the public, who overwhelmingly supported Anne Hartridge and Matt George, the east Sacramento couple cited by city code enforcers after they stopped watering their lawn.
Fortunately no guns were used during the citation.
July 3, 2008 at 5:47 pm
This is very apparent lately. You don’t see many ultra-green lawns anymore. Looking at our old photographs, say..for ten years or so, I can see how we steadily watered less and less. It just seems so wasteful to water anything but gardens.
So I guess this means that awareness of the global water situation is finally getting into our collective consciousness?
July 3, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Yes, I think so. If you read the whole story in the Bee, that couple was living an extremely “green” lifestyle and was being threatened with a fine of almost $1000. Fortunately , cooler heads prevailed, no pun intended..
July 3, 2008 at 6:12 pm
I’m wondering why in this part of the state we have not invested in water salination plants and hydro power?
July 3, 2008 at 6:17 pm
There are some very picky people in the world that want everything neat and tidy and over the past 10 years they’ve made several ordinances in cities that force people to live their type of lifestyle at least on the outside of their homes. I remember a few years ago that people were being evicted because they were flying peace signs in their yards.
July 3, 2008 at 6:25 pm
when wasting scarce water for purely aesthetic reasons based on weird leave-it-to-beaver norms of lawn appearance actually becomes mandatory, and thousand dollar fines are applied and you have to raise a ruckus just to have the ridiculous fines removed – well at that point you know you’ve got big problems as far as the nanny state shacking up with the police state!
it hasn’t become quite that silly (yet) in humboldt, but the recent code enforcement debacle here showed that we’re beginning to stray in that direction, particularly with the hysteria over composting toilets and simple greywater arrangements.
fortunately most humboldt county residents have too much common sense, and too much self-respect, intelligence and political empowerment, to let the county stray that far into the realm of mandatory suburban / golf-course / mcmansion norms, at least not out in our rural areas.
thanks for posting this one heraldo, and for being on top of this important issue.
July 3, 2008 at 7:08 pm
6:25 wrote, “but the recent code enforcement debacle here showed that we’re beginning to stray in that direction, particularly with the hysteria over composting toilets and simple greywater arrangements.”.
And Eureka’s Abandond Vehicle Abatement ordinance.
July 3, 2008 at 11:02 pm
A friend in Sacramento told me the deed to her house says it is not allowed to grow food in the front yard. I guess that was thought to be tacky in the 40s? Her deed also says that the house shall not be sold to Negros.
July 4, 2008 at 12:00 am
There are upscale and gated community subdivisions all over the country with codiciles which prevent green lifestyles. Some don’t allow clothes lines, solar panels, or food gardens, and require that people’s front yards be maintained by an employee or contractor chosen by the home owner association leadership without individual choice of chemical / green. There are even subdivisions in Humboldt County with some of those rules and others almost as bad. For them it is about maintaining their property values through homogenity and keeping the riff raff independent minded people out. They might have to lock those gates sometime and don’t want the “wrong” kind of people on the inside.
July 4, 2008 at 7:18 am
and people have a right to choose how they live
July 4, 2008 at 7:22 am
People have the right to choose how they live but do not have the right to exclude others that they find unsuitable for racial or class reasons from their little personal Disneylands.
have a peaceful day,
Bill
July 4, 2008 at 7:39 am
Your friend’s deed must be very old as any mention of race has been deleted years ago.
July 4, 2008 at 7:45 am
Overt racism in the United States was very prevalent within my lifetime. In early 1970 I was driving into Glendale California and was welcomed by signs saying “No Colored People allowed after 9 PM in the City of Glendale.”
Glendale is a mostly white suburb of Los Angeles.
I happened to be riding with a friend of mine who is black, and who had just returned from Nam. He didn’t say anything but……..
When he saw the sign I wonder how he felt.
What do you think?
have a peaceful day,
Bill
July 4, 2008 at 10:07 am
Give me a break, I grew up in the valley, in fact came back from the army in 72. Your just repeating bullshit you heard. My mom and dad born in LA and grew up in Sherman Oaks/Van Nuys. I lived in the valley from birth 1950 til 1975. I was in and out of Burbank and Glendale daily for business/school during the late 60’s and early 70’s and never saw any such shit. My dad had seen those sighs in the 40’s when they recuited blacks to work at lockeed during WW2. I’m not saying racism does not exits and is just flat fucking wrong, just that your full of it..
What do I think, just like most of the socialism garbage you spout, your full of shit.
July 4, 2008 at 10:14 am
Really? I grew up in Pasadena. There are lots of people who knew the truth about Glendale California in the ’60’s and ’70s. Glendale hosted the national headquarters of the american nazi party for years.
Maybe you saw it but you just thought it was normal.
have a peaceful day,
Bill
July 4, 2008 at 10:18 am
A bit jarring in 1965 to drive down Colorado Boulevard in Glendale and see a huge red and black swastika flag hanging in front of a building.
George Lincoln Rockwell. Look him up. Tell us where his headquarters was.
have a peaceful day,
Bill
July 4, 2008 at 10:34 am
” In 1964, Glendale was selected by George Lincoln Rockwell to be the West Coast headquarters of the American Nazi Party. Its offices, on Colorado Street in the downtown section of the city, remained open until the early 1980s.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glendale,_California
“In summer 1966, Rockwell led a counter-demonstration to Martin Luther King’s attempt to bring an end to de facto segregation in the white Chicago suburb of Cicero, Illinois. He believed King was merely a tool for Jewish Communists to integrate America. [2] Although he admired J. Edgar Hoover’s stand against communist subversion and would have approved of Hoover’s tactics against King [3], unbeknownst to him, Rockwell was also targeted by the FBI’s counter intelligence program: COINTELPRO.
Rockwell led the American Nazi Party in assisting the Ku Klux Klan and similar groups during the Civil Rights Movement, by countering the Freedom Riders and the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. But he soon came to believe the Klan was stuck in the past and ineffective for helping him wage a modern race struggle. After hearing the slogan “Black Power” during a debate in 1966 with Black Panther Stokely Carmichael, Rockwell altered the phrase and started a call for “White Power.” White Power would later become the name of the party’s newspaper and the title of a book authored by Rockwell.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lincoln_Rockwell
have a peaceful day,
Bill
July 4, 2008 at 11:33 am
We lived in Silverlake area until buying a house in the ’60’s in Glendale and I don’t remember seeing such signs either. I believe on the deed to our house there was a paragraph that changed the race issue then so I don’t think a sign would have been there in the ’70’s. I had seen other area’s deeds and had never seen one with a race exclusion and remember the word Negro was used and not “colored”.
McKinleyville years back had lots of Klu Klux Klan. Maybe they moved from Glendale.
July 4, 2008 at 11:38 am
“Then, the second lesson I would lift up is this: we discovered that we could make a massive change in the mind and the heart of the United States. And we did. Let me see if I can just quickly sketch this for you. We have not solved all our problems in the areas of hospitality for one another. There is a vast distance for us yet to go, even in our churches. Some of you may recall, however, that in the ‘50s and ‘60s all across this country in waiting rooms and public buildings, in drugstore counters and restaurants, in skating rinks and movie theaters, there were signs that said something like this. In South Dakota, “No Indians allowed here.” In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the sign in the restaurant might say, “No Wop allowed here.” In New York, it could say “No Jew.” In Glendale, California, a few miles from where I live, the signs outside the town said, “No Negro is supposed to let the sun set on him in Glendale, California.” In San Clemente, California, just down the road, signs said, “No Jew allowed in San Clemente. No Negro allowed in San Clemente.” The signs in Nashville, Tennessee said “White Only,” “Colored Only” over water fountains and restrooms and all types of places. And no one protested this.
http://www.cofchrist.org/PEACEAWARD/Lawson-keynote2004.asp
We saw this sign in 1970 at the city limits. Right under the “Welcome to Glendale” sign on Colorado Blvd.
Maybe the reverend had the same hallucination as we did.
have a peaceful day,
Bill
July 4, 2008 at 5:34 pm
wikipedia is the shitiest “info” encyclopedia out there, just the mere fact the anyone can add there “fact” in to a story is fuckin hilarious….I think that racism is some made up fuckin word, before black slaves , for hundred of years before the black thing there was slaves of all colors being shackled and brought to egypt to work, the only reason that black slavery prevailed was because ..it was easier to idenitfy them by color, not because of breed or hate or whatever you were brought up to believe. Hate was prophegated by the US Gov. as a form of control, IE, so they wont hate us, lets make em hate someone else..
July 4, 2008 at 5:57 pm
Well then go ahead and add one of your “facts” above to wikipedia and get back to us when it is there. This should be interesting.
July 4, 2008 at 8:16 pm
Hey humred, ever thought about moving your caustic, cynical diatribes over to the Mirror? Maybe take your shit brained posse with you?
July 5, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Until the 1954 Brown vs. Board decision, racial segregation in schools was constitutional in the US, and it was widely practiced.
Until the 1964 Civil Rights Act, racial discrimination in housing, employment and public facilities was legal for Federal Government sponsored activities. The Act was based on the constitutional authority of the Federal Government to regulate Commerce, not an implementation of constitutional Equal Protection
Property deeds authored before 1964 could have valid discriminatory clauses based on race, creed, or national origin among other things. Even after 1964, many deeds probably were written with those provisions since there were later court cases to clarify the 1964 Act’s meaning.
July 9, 2008 at 8:21 am
How did a topic of code enforcement turn into a race debate? We in America are too passive and have let all of our civil liberties be trampled on and sold to the highest bidder. The American dream is gone, over, done. You can’t think outside the box and dream anymore. The feds will come and take it and you away. Checkout this web site and the message it says about how our government is not for the people anymore and how code enforcement is about how much control over the people they have.
http://www.garbagewarrior.com/
It is very interesting how many years it took for this guy to get a testing site for these self-sustaining houses. This guy had to go to places devastated by natural disasters to get his message heard. We all need to do more like this guy or the planet is doomed.