Bored of Adjustment
As part of an ongoing series to investigate which boards can be eliminated in the future, I attended the Estes Park (likely Estes Valley, but let's pretend) Board of Adjustment meeting yesterday (first of the year), which is essentially as painful as lying on a board of chiropractic adjustment, but let me fill you in on the less excruciating portion:
(A) It was mercifully short, no more than 43 minutes, or 5/7 of an hour, or the distance you would drive at 35 mph if you drove for 43 minutes (see below)
So I didn't recognize any of the members of the board, likely because they spend most of their time in assisted living, and I don't, but the de facto head (even though he wasn't front and center, that was one of the Newsoms, who still uses the cringeworthy term "secretary", but I can never tell which is Pat and which is not Pat) was a guy they kept referring to as Rex (Pocketpool, or similar), even though, from the back row (it wasn't crowded, I just didn't want to appear like I was soliciting) there were more than three letters in the placard indicating his first name. I wonder if Rex is short for Rexall, or Tyrannosaurus Rex, but anyway, he was giving unwanted deck advice to one of the applicants, so perhaps the board could be reformulated as the Deck Board.
Here's the problem with the Board of Adjustment: They have five board members, which is four too many for the "problems" they confronted yesterday (the first meeting of the year). There were two different property owners in two different sections of town, both with the same prayer and petition. Their building (through no fault of their own) was over the right of way, or breezeway, or throughway, or something (actually I think the term was setback, they were in violation of the 25-foot setback, but the whole meeting was a setback, so I'm avoiding that word henceforth), and they were requesting a variance, because their structure was technically legally nonconforming (that is a great pairing, I'm going to start incorporating that into my alibi to continue pursuing my hobby of robbing convenience stores at gunpoint - "Look, Judge, I know it's wrong, but just consider me legally nonconforming"), and they wanted to make it legally conforming, even though it was still obviously nonconforming.
So staff read through various figures about how legally nonconforming it was, converting this to fractions or percentages of nonconformance (this may only have applied to yesterday, but I really don't see any need to convert some amount where the denominator is 25 into percentages. I think it's a small number, and fairly obvious to the indentured servants (sorry, conscientious citizens) how much 23/25 is as a percentage, even as an approximate, because you can just multiply the numerator by 4, likely in your head, if you are having trouble figuring out whether 23/25 is a small fraction or a large fraction, but maybe at other meetings (for example, the second meeting of the year, held in July) they are dealing with setbacks of 11,307 feet or, I don't know, maybe these guys' idea of a good time is playing with numbers - to that end, I will say they exerted a lot of their remaining breath showing off their knowledge of how .3 feet was less than 4 inches (obviously, since 1/3 of a foot is 4 inches, and obviously, since Pocketpool has a ready reference for 4 inches) and staff (well, Randy Hunt, who loves cars, the other planner was mostly sniffing) made an analogy of how, if you were driving 35 mph, you would cover 100 feet in two seconds, which is apropos of absolutely nothing, since most sane carpenters and contractors and architects and town planners are going to measure 100 feet with a tape measure, not by driving their car 35 mph through someone's yard) how it was no fault of the current owners that it was nonconforming (but they couldn't find the records that far back (40 years, apparently we are unable to travel to Fort Collins in pursuit of justice) to find out exactly when it had become nonconforming), whether utilities were upset about this, and, in one case, whether neighbors were upset about this (and, amazingly, in one case, a neighbor wrote a letter, which was placed in the board's packet, BUT THEY HADN'T HAD TIME TO READ IT YET (note: this was the first meeting of the year), and so wondered if a summary of the letter could be provided - So the lesson for people who don't like granting their neighbors a variance is: Write a one-sentence letter, perhaps "If this moron is granted a variance, I will join Al Qeada and go nuclear on his ass" which will result in the same unanimous vote to grant the variance, but at least move your concerns very quickly very high up the chain, likely FBI agents knocking on your door before you finish (is that the doorbell?) reading this sentence).
The two options to make the building legally conforming are: (A) immediately tear the building down or (B) grant the variance.
Guess which choice the board decided to make in both cases, after wasting time making empty pronouncements and chest puffing and claiming that older people are incapable of hosting parties or making noise at parties, and converting fractions into distances traveled by rocks thrown at birds, by unanimous 5-0 votes?
My point is, who does this entire exercise benefit (meaning who, which people, from appointing the board and heating a room so the board doesn't complain about lumbago and making staff get out of their pajamas and please for the love of God don't tell me someone was forced to be in the video room filming this)? Does it give junior staff real-world practice in speaking before a sympathetic audience, so when they move to a municipality with real, non-rich people's problems, they can handle the criticism and the "untelegraphed in advance" questions? Does it justify paying someone to type (or correct the computer transcript of) the meeting minutes, because otherwise we would be paying them to play Bejeweled? Does it demonstrate that Estes Park is a functioning democracy, rather than the Wild West where people build however close to the property line they want, then wait a few years until the records are lost or the town planners rezone it from Commercial to Z-1 nonconforming single family or 10 guys from Ireland hot-bunking because we don't have enough workforce housing, then sell it to some poor schmuck who can't recognize that a 92% violation of the setback is a large percentage rather than a negligible four-incher, and doesn't have a car he can drive 35 mph off his deck to prove this?
Thus did one hour tick off of everyone's lives yesterday (that's 1/128,438 of some of your lives), and near the end they all self-nominated or friend-nominated themselves to be volunteers on county-level boards, with Rexaroni being named Vice Chancellor or Viceroy or something in charge of stringer and riser proposals nationwide.
Oh, and the answer to the little quiz above was: They voted unanimously to demolish both residences, in fact called in the wrecker before slamming the gavel down on adjournment, because we don't mess around with people who build too close to their property line in his town, whether or not it is their fault. One of the owners reflexively and without thinking of the consequences lipped off a bit in protest, and Rick Life shot him. No, no, that's not true, there were no police there, because police are not required to be at a cemetery or a place where cheese is stored to ferment.
So I didn't recognize any of the members of the board, likely because they spend most of their time in assisted living, and I don't, but the de facto head (even though he wasn't front and center, that was one of the Newsoms, who still uses the cringeworthy term "secretary", but I can never tell which is Pat and which is not Pat) was a guy they kept referring to as Rex (Pocketpool, or similar), even though, from the back row (it wasn't crowded, I just didn't want to appear like I was soliciting) there were more than three letters in the placard indicating his first name. I wonder if Rex is short for Rexall, or Tyrannosaurus Rex, but anyway, he was giving unwanted deck advice to one of the applicants, so perhaps the board could be reformulated as the Deck Board.
Here's the problem with the Board of Adjustment: They have five board members, which is four too many for the "problems" they confronted yesterday (the first meeting of the year). There were two different property owners in two different sections of town, both with the same prayer and petition. Their building (through no fault of their own) was over the right of way, or breezeway, or throughway, or something (actually I think the term was setback, they were in violation of the 25-foot setback, but the whole meeting was a setback, so I'm avoiding that word henceforth), and they were requesting a variance, because their structure was technically legally nonconforming (that is a great pairing, I'm going to start incorporating that into my alibi to continue pursuing my hobby of robbing convenience stores at gunpoint - "Look, Judge, I know it's wrong, but just consider me legally nonconforming"), and they wanted to make it legally conforming, even though it was still obviously nonconforming.
So staff read through various figures about how legally nonconforming it was, converting this to fractions or percentages of nonconformance (this may only have applied to yesterday, but I really don't see any need to convert some amount where the denominator is 25 into percentages. I think it's a small number, and fairly obvious to the indentured servants (sorry, conscientious citizens) how much 23/25 is as a percentage, even as an approximate, because you can just multiply the numerator by 4, likely in your head, if you are having trouble figuring out whether 23/25 is a small fraction or a large fraction, but maybe at other meetings (for example, the second meeting of the year, held in July) they are dealing with setbacks of 11,307 feet or, I don't know, maybe these guys' idea of a good time is playing with numbers - to that end, I will say they exerted a lot of their remaining breath showing off their knowledge of how .3 feet was less than 4 inches (obviously, since 1/3 of a foot is 4 inches, and obviously, since Pocketpool has a ready reference for 4 inches) and staff (well, Randy Hunt, who loves cars, the other planner was mostly sniffing) made an analogy of how, if you were driving 35 mph, you would cover 100 feet in two seconds, which is apropos of absolutely nothing, since most sane carpenters and contractors and architects and town planners are going to measure 100 feet with a tape measure, not by driving their car 35 mph through someone's yard) how it was no fault of the current owners that it was nonconforming (but they couldn't find the records that far back (40 years, apparently we are unable to travel to Fort Collins in pursuit of justice) to find out exactly when it had become nonconforming), whether utilities were upset about this, and, in one case, whether neighbors were upset about this (and, amazingly, in one case, a neighbor wrote a letter, which was placed in the board's packet, BUT THEY HADN'T HAD TIME TO READ IT YET (note: this was the first meeting of the year), and so wondered if a summary of the letter could be provided - So the lesson for people who don't like granting their neighbors a variance is: Write a one-sentence letter, perhaps "If this moron is granted a variance, I will join Al Qeada and go nuclear on his ass" which will result in the same unanimous vote to grant the variance, but at least move your concerns very quickly very high up the chain, likely FBI agents knocking on your door before you finish (is that the doorbell?) reading this sentence).
The two options to make the building legally conforming are: (A) immediately tear the building down or (B) grant the variance.
Guess which choice the board decided to make in both cases, after wasting time making empty pronouncements and chest puffing and claiming that older people are incapable of hosting parties or making noise at parties, and converting fractions into distances traveled by rocks thrown at birds, by unanimous 5-0 votes?
My point is, who does this entire exercise benefit (meaning who, which people, from appointing the board and heating a room so the board doesn't complain about lumbago and making staff get out of their pajamas and please for the love of God don't tell me someone was forced to be in the video room filming this)? Does it give junior staff real-world practice in speaking before a sympathetic audience, so when they move to a municipality with real, non-rich people's problems, they can handle the criticism and the "untelegraphed in advance" questions? Does it justify paying someone to type (or correct the computer transcript of) the meeting minutes, because otherwise we would be paying them to play Bejeweled? Does it demonstrate that Estes Park is a functioning democracy, rather than the Wild West where people build however close to the property line they want, then wait a few years until the records are lost or the town planners rezone it from Commercial to Z-1 nonconforming single family or 10 guys from Ireland hot-bunking because we don't have enough workforce housing, then sell it to some poor schmuck who can't recognize that a 92% violation of the setback is a large percentage rather than a negligible four-incher, and doesn't have a car he can drive 35 mph off his deck to prove this?
Thus did one hour tick off of everyone's lives yesterday (that's 1/128,438 of some of your lives), and near the end they all self-nominated or friend-nominated themselves to be volunteers on county-level boards, with Rexaroni being named Vice Chancellor or Viceroy or something in charge of stringer and riser proposals nationwide.
Oh, and the answer to the little quiz above was: They voted unanimously to demolish both residences, in fact called in the wrecker before slamming the gavel down on adjournment, because we don't mess around with people who build too close to their property line in his town, whether or not it is their fault. One of the owners reflexively and without thinking of the consequences lipped off a bit in protest, and Rick Life shot him. No, no, that's not true, there were no police there, because police are not required to be at a cemetery or a place where cheese is stored to ferment.
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