Correction

For many years, the Village has had a requirement that parking should be provided "on the property," not just in the swale.  Some homeowners never followed this requirement, and for whatever reasons, the Village did not enforce it.  In 2015, the Code Review Committee presented to the Commission a new proposed Code, and it strengthened and clarified requirements for parking.  The requirement for parking "on the property" was retained in the 2015 proposal.

At that point, there were over 60 properties that were out of compliance, and they always had been.  The Commission adjusted and ratified the CRC's proposal, but there were still some issues that were in some dispute, among Village residents and among Commissioners.  So there were ongoing efforts to further adjust the Code.  For the moment, the 2015 Code was the Code of record.

At that point, Village homeowners who were out of compliance, and always had been, did one of two things.  One was to adhere to the new Code, and that adherence took the form of designing and constructing proper parking where it should be, and where it should always have been.  About half of the 60+ property owners took that route.  The other half decided to do nothing, either because they didn't want to (they never wanted to), or because they wanted to wait for the final adjustment.

One thing that is important to realize here is that if homeowners whose properties are out of compliance felt more confident about what the Code was, and that it would not change, more of them would presumably have made the changes necessary.  So most Village residents, even among those whose properties were out of compliance and had always been so, actually want to do the "right thing."  Half already did, and more would have, if the last Commission had not hung them up by still considering possible changes.

From 2015, there has been a driveway and swale Code, and it required, as has always been required, parking "on the property."  Toward the end of 2016, there was another proposal, but it didn't pass.  So the controlling Code was and still is the 2015 Code.

When I quoted in the immediately preceding blog post that there were 12 properties out of compliance, I was wrong.  The correct number is 31 such properties.  It's still true that Will Tudor's property, and his sister-in-law's property, are among those out of compliance, but they are two of 31, not two of 12.

There's a "big picture" here.  Tracy Truppman's posture is that she doesn't want to ask her neighbors to spend money to improve their properties.  She doesn't argue that adherence to the old and new Code isn't an improvement.  She just doesn't want to be the "heavy" who makes this imposition on her neighbors.  That's the little picture.  The big picture is that what the old Code required, and the new Code reiterated, represents an improvement in the neighborhood.  Some people are asked to make a sacrifice for the good of the whole Village.

It's true that this kind of improvement costs money, and people don't like to spend money.  I myself was sensitive to that during my tenure on the Commission, and I advocated allowing people in less generous fiscal circumstances to have more time to make the changes.  In reality, the deadline for the change was September of 2015.  I have spoken to Village residents whose properties are not in compliance, but who recognize the value of complying, and who simply couldn't afford to comply by September, 2015.  Their intentions are good, and I lobbied to give them more time.  But I never took the position Tracy takes, which is to construct a Code that allows the weakest homeowners to control the look and functioning of the whole neighborhood, and thus to sacrifice the neighborhood and its appearance and its functioning and its good intentions for the lack of ambition of a few of its residents.  That's not how you protect and improve a neighborhood.  It's not how you try to enhance things like property values.  Frankly, it's a gross failure of leadership.  (Tracy told us previously that she doesn't think the Commission should, as she put it, "legislate from the bench."  Now, she shows us that she doesn't think the interests of the whole Village should be imposed on a very small minority of Village homeowners.  Those two things represent almost everything the Commission has to do.  So it's unclear why Tracy worked to get a job she doesn't want to do.)

And it wouldn't make any difference if Tracy is a failed leader, except that she controls the thinking and the behavior of three other Commissioners.  It is those three other Commissioners who make Tracy's failure a failure of the whole government of the Village, and thus of the Village itself.  It's now about one year down, and one to go, for two of the pets Tracy keeps on a short leash.  And it's three more years of Tracy and her other pet.