Once again, the wonderful bureacracy of our city comes into play.
Our contractor called on Friday morning May 12 to say that the city was going to hold up the permit for our demolition, scheduled to start on May 15. The "building" group had not seen the letter from the "planning" group approving our project, even thought they sit 25 feet from each other in eyesight of each other's desks!
In addition, the new demolition permit costs would be $4,000, surprise surprise, because of recycling fees. Luckily our contractor was able to figure a workaround on the fees. If we tear down the illegal structures (aka apartments) in our back yard first, then all that square footage would not be included in the recycling cost. All that we would pay recycling on would be the original footprint of the house, $500, to be torn down in a second phase.
In addition, the Building group through another obstacle in our way that they were no longer granting demolition permits until the construction plans were approved. Luckily these will be ready Wednesday and we'll only lose a week because of this nonsense.
I also had the royal run around trying to meet the "conditions" o f our plan approval that we needed to file a "Notice of Project Restriction" with the county, with no guidelines on how to do this. So off I went to the County (different building altogether than the City) to get guidelines.
Upon arrival, the receptionist had no idea what I was looking for and handed me an 8 page list of their documents - "here, you find it in this list" she said. First I looked under "Notice", nothing, then "Project" and "Restriction", nothing. I scanned the whole list for 5 minutes, nothing. I then told her it was not on the list.
She proceeded to lead me to a computer and said "now you will need to look for a needle in a haystack" and pulled up a list of the last 2 weeks of recordings others had filed at the County. "Here you go, let me know when you find it". Unbelievable.
Fortunately, the second document I pulled up was exactly what I needed and I printed it off (for which she charged me $5 for 4 pages) and went off to replicate it. I noticed on this person's application that the City had filled it out on the Owner's behalf. What the heck, now the City is pawning off this work to the Owner? That made me really mad.
Anyway, I replicated it as best I could, headed to have it notarized the next morning, filed with the County and gave a copy to our contractor for the City Building application. Whew! You have to love the City for throwing obstacles in your way. Needless to say I will recommend they have a copy of what the Notice should look like to give to future Owners like me.
