2009-11-06 TMALA MOHALA - Laserfiche WebLink

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has been really difficult. I’ve been put in a very difficult situation. I don’t come from lots of money. This has been a mom and pop shop. And so it’s really been this way or we just go away. And I feel bad. I mean this isn’t second grade and I understand the gravity; and I appreciate what you guys are saying. I don’t want to be that guy that you guys push away. You know, I’m trying to just think in my head what would be appropriate, something that would, you know, you’re trying to make a point to people not doing this. I don’t know whether I could do community service, or stand in front of these things and when people are coming in it’s like listen, I’ve been there, don’t, you know -. I’m not sure. I am open to consequences. I’m not trying to avoid them. I knew this day would come and I knew I made some bad choices. It’s unfortunate. I believe some of you are feeling like I went out of my way to disrespect this Commission and the decisions; and that’s not the case. And I do take responsibility for that. So I would be happy to sit down and discuss what the consequences would be. And I’m open to that. WOODWARD: Madam Director. LEITHEAD TODD: I just wanted to make some comments. Like we have many violations that come to the Department that never make it to the Planning Commission.And typically what we do is we tell people go make it legal. We rarely tell anyone tear it down. You know, I think I’ve got one case in my office now where I’m having to tell them because it’s an existing subdivision, it’s within the setbacks, and it, you know, clearly they should have known better kind of a thing. And there’s no way to make it legal. But typically what we do when somebody builds a house and they didn’t have a building permit, they built a structure and they didn’t have a building permit, and we find out about it, we say, look, go to the Building Department, make it legal. And then, you know, in our violations we may issue a fine or we may not. Because mainly what we’re trying to do is get compliance. We’re not trying to penalize people. And we’re just trying to make people go through the ropes; and that’s typically how we treat them. A lot of these structures on his property if they are below six feet in height they do not require a building permit. So it is not all of the structures that you see. It is just a few of them that are problematic. And when he goes to the Building Department to try and make them legal, he may, in fact, have to retrofit some of them, depending on how they’re constructed if they don’t meet Building Code. So there will be a cost to them. And I’m going to tell you, .like in some of the cases that we have dealt in our office that never make it to you folks, the cost can be substantial for people to bring their places into compliance. So that is kind of a penalty. And then the threat is that if they don’t make it legal then we go in and take more action, and we have put liens on people’s properties. You know, one of these days we may be going in with a bulldozer on some places. But we do have a progressive, you know, step that we take on things; and we’ve issued fines for some people. But usually if people try to work with us then that’s all we’re really asking. And so in this case I wouldn’t want to, you know, treat this applicant differently than the way we treat everybody else, which is basically go make the building legal. So I just wanted to state that. WOODWARD: All right. 18 EXHIBIT B