I haven’t been keeping up this week.
But I do have an excuse. I’m hard at work preparing for a hearing before the city’s Building Board of Appeals on Friday afternoon. This is the tail end of a two-year saga dealing with the Department of Planning and Permitting. I’m not going to try to lay out the saga here, but I do hope to write about it when we’re out the other side.
Suffice it to say that we were cited for replacing the section of our driveway where it meets the road in order to stop the road runoff from flooding our yard during heaving rains. We measured the adjoining driveways and matched their driveways, not thinking that it required a permit. Well, heads up. Don’t touch your driveway without a permit!
But the story is really what we’ve gone through trying to correct the situation. It’s been somewhere between a nightmare and a joke.
In any case, I’m preparing to make our case to the Board of Appeals. Win or lose, it’s going to be interesting.
And I hope to get back here regularly again once this is over.
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My sense is that in many or most cases, citations for something like this are often the result of someone complaining or ‘whistle blowing’ if they’re negatively affected by your driveway modification. Is this the case? Curious . . .
No, that seems very unlikely. The inspector just happened to drive past several days after the concrete pour, and we still had cones out to try to keep people from driving on it until the concrete set fully. We didn’t realize that a permit was required, so weren’t worried about being seen.
I would have thought it would be classified as a repair and not new construction, which would exempt it from needing a permit.
Ian your too straight! Should have paid a fixer like John Henry Felix paying Don Clegg or a Pacarro or two!
Good luck. Dealing with DPP is a nightmare.
You would think that they would have thanked you.
Have fun with it. Make them like you. You can do it.
DPP only goes after folks who are responsible. If you cite the fact that they do not aggressively go after folks like monster home builders who build w/no permits, then you can reason why you should not be singled out.
Yeah, blame it on your neighbors. How else would the authorities have known about your driveway. We fixed ours and have had no problems.
Ian, They are going after my driveway too! Said it was a complaint. Its been going on for over a year …. None of my neighbors are anywhere near code. They are after me for doing a repair DPP told me I needed to make over 10 years ago…, now they say I shouldn’t have done it…. Argh!
Personally, I have no gripes against DPP.