Dumping trash on our city

I'll be calling 311 about this one shortly.

Update: I called 311 around 5:00 p.m. I was told that I had to call Sanitation. I asked if they could transfer me. The operator told me that Sanitation's calls were now transfered to 311 because Sanitation closes at 4:45 p.m. That seems like an odd time to knock off. The ironic thing is that if I had dumped the stuff myself, 311 could have taken the request to have it removed. But because it was done illegally, I have to call Sanitation myself. You would think 311 could just take the report, route it to Sanitation and at some point Sanitation would take care of it.

Welcome to LA!

Are you for real?

Just when you thought local government couldn't become any more of an unresponsive monstrosity, comes the story of Stephen Bainbridge via this morning’s LAObserved. The poor guy wanted to build an addition to his house but was informed by the Department of Building and Safety that his house does not exist.

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."

Naturally.

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.

But, Google Earth would fool no one at LADBS.

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.

Good luck Stephen. If it’s any consolation, I was told my entire street doesn’t exist when I called 3-1-1 last week for graffiti removal. Google says it does. Hate to say it, but that whole Google world domination thing is looking better and better.

P.S. Stephen, just build the damn family room. Permits are so twentieth century—and besides, government has more important things to worry about—like fighting the Global War on McDonald’s—than to care if your house collapses like an Indonesian mud hut.