Government by Ratting Out

What I call Government by Ratting Out is when a city government chooses not to do anything about enforcing certain of its laws, even when it is fully aware of violations. Then, if a resident complains about a particular violation, it springs into action. If an official were to admit to such behavior, I imagine he or she would say something like,"Why should we enforce relatively minor laws if no one is offended? It would just irritate people unnecessarily and waste our time. Instead, we let the community alert us to the problems that are really bothering them, and we make the problems go away. Everybody's happy in the end, and we look like heroes. What's wrong with that?"

There are several things wrong with that:

• It teaches the lesson that the law isn't applied uniformly to all violators.
• People who are timid about reporting violations to begin with might not call in with a very real problem. And they shouldn't have to, if the problem is obvious to the city.
• If government employees get into the mindset of doing whatever it takes to make a complainer happy, neighborhood bullies can be enabled, and the government may go too far, trying to "solve" a problem that doesn't exist. This happened to me, below.
• It can tend to turn a city into a community of informers. I don't think we want that. I know I don't.

Now, to be on the conservative side, I should say that I can't state with 100% certainty that GRO is in place in Park Ridge; It's possible that I've merely seen a statistically rare combination of events that only give that appearance. But given the experiences below, what I've been told by some other people, and what I've seen in preparing this web site, I honestly don't think that is the case.

Here are three incidents I was involved with:

1. Long ago, when my dad was still alive, I stacked a pile of firewood right on the ground, close to the property line with the neighbor to our rear. I was a bit of a perfectionist, and took quite a while to get it arranged just right and nearly hurricane-proof. Then we got a letter from the city saying that it was a rodent hazard and had to be raised up off of the ground. Since the pile wasn't very close to either house, I called several animal authorities and asked whether it was indeed a rodent danger. The responses I got were that it wasn't much of a danger, but they couldn't rule out that it might increase the number of rodents slightly. I accepted that--though I wasn't happy with the neighbor for calling the city instead of coming to talk to us directly. (Eventually I built a really nice platform, and moved the wood there.) So far, no big deal. But then I looked around the neighborhood, and saw that the majority of people who had firewood piles had them sitting right on the ground, and had them right next to the house (i.e., food). I was angry about this, because these violations were in plain sight from the street, yet we were the only ones singled out, because of our neighbor. I told the city worker that if firewood on the ground was a problem then Park Ridge workers should do something about it for all the easily-spotted violations, and if on the other hand it wasn't a problem, we should be left alone. He wouldn't agree with that, so I figured I'd motivate them by overloading them with work, and make them move to a fairer system. I filled out a huge sheet of addresses of violations and sent it in. I got a snotty letter back, which claimed, falsely, that a huge number of the addresses weren't in violation. Furthermore, the letter said I had to follow extra requirements if I wanted to do that again in the future. I didn't save the letter, so I don't remember everything, but one thing they insisted on was that the addresses be written in alphanumeric order. I complained to the guy's supervisor, who was unsympathetic. I was told that we needed to fix the situation, and that other violators wouldn't have to. That sucked.
2. More recently, there was a period during which I had some excruciating back pains resulting from being hit by a car while walking. (I talk about that elsewhere on the site.) There were times when I couldn't mow the lawn because of the pain. (In fact, there were times when there was only one position in which I could my body without being in agony.) Once it had gotten somewhat long, and a neighbor who's kind of a jerk called it in. I got a letter claiming that our house had been visited on date X and the lawn was over 12 inches high. First of all, it was never anywhere near that high. Second, I knew that on X-10 days I had pushed through the pain and mowed the long grass (so that it would look nice for an event that day), and kept it within 3/4" of that height since. So I called in to talk about the situation. The woman insisted that someone had come out on the date in the letter and made the observation. She told me a lie.
3. I got another such letter after that, again claiming that the grass was over 12 inches. (I assume the same neighbor called again.) I went outside with a ruler and took a sampling of the lawn height. The average was a little over 3 inches high. There was an area where runoff water and fertilizer from a neighbor's lawn had caused the grass to shoot up, but that area was only a few square feet, and was at no point even 8 inches high. I called the guy who sent the letter, informed him that there was no way his letter was accurate. He insisted it was, and that he had gotten out of his vehicle with a ruler and measured it. I told him that I wanted him to come out again and measure it in my presence. He refused, and said he would only come out on the scheduled recheck date. He was a liar, and his response confirmed it: If someone had said I was lying to him, as I essentially had, you had better believe that I would be out there as soon as I could, to prove him wrong and defend my honor.