Y'all will probably remember that I've gotten four of these tickets and since the Moyer-UCD-Conspiracy-Theory labels me as a "BID Boy" I highly doubt this is part of a UCD plot. But he's right that something is seriously wrong here. I'd been complaining about this seemingly random ticketing for ages and it was finally Matt Wolfe who, through Frank Rizzo's office got it settled for me. (UCD, in the form of John Fenton, offered to appear as a character witness for me, but apart from that UCD was unable to solve the ticketing problem.) One part of the solution was that I take a digital picture of the front of my house every day and more on days when my neighbors put their trash out at random times since my getting tickets often seems to be related to next door neighbors putting out trash on random days (or letting their weeds grow to five feet tall). The last three times that a ticket has shown up, I've been able to flip through the photo archive and show what the front of my house looked like on that day. I think everybody agrees that this is an outrageous solution and an onerous burden on the homeowner -- to daily have to prove their innocence. Tickets should be delivered on the day they're written, if not the day after, and if I can take a digital photo of my non-violation, why can't the ticketing officer take an illustrative photo of the actual offense? It seems to me that would be a foolproof solution as the person receiving the ticket would have the option to say, at their hearing "That's not my house, I actually live over here, this is my neighbor at #412 in the photo" or "Dang, ya got me."
I agree with Glenn about one thing, the ticketing system, as it stands, seems to be largely random. I have neighbors who dump trash on the street four days before trash-day with seeming impunity, two neighbors who let their lawns grow high enough to hide tigers, with seeming impunity, and then we hear on the list of random good neighbors who are recycle nazi's and chronic front-walk sweepers who suddenly get a ticket saying they had mountains of trash in front of their house four months prior. This anecdotal evidence makes me wonder if the ticket writers could be doing a lot of their work from the Green Line. I want stricter trash-code enforcement, because I don't want garbage blowing up and down the street, and I don't want to be tripping over cardboard boxes filled with lemon rinds and plaster but I want it to be based on actual violations. kc >Friends, together the evidence points overwhelmingly to many of our tickets >being >manufactured in a coordinated effort with the UCD. Our property addresses are >chosen >by an unaccountable UCD to serve their intimidation purposes. If you saw the >front of >my house, you would see that I am being targeted by UCD for this harassment >and intimidation >for reasons other than trash.
