Dealing with city bureaucracy
If you own a home in Philadelphia and ever plan on building a deck, legally that is, you might want to read this. Don’t be fooled when they try to offer you the EZ deck permit. Unless you are building a small deck, one foot or less above the ground, totally in the rear yard, there is nothing easy about it.
If your case is like ours, and the kitchen door happens to be on the side of the house, right off the bat you will need a zoning variance. So you wait more than two weeks to receive the refusal that you already know will come, and go from there. Next you file an appeal.
Two trips to L&I and $150 later, you can wait for a hearing before the Zoning Board of Adjustment, anywhere up to 90 days — yes, up to three months.
Meanwhile, you need to contact your entire neighborhood, city councilperson and your community organization to inform them that you want to build a deck. Next you post a lovely orange sign on your front lawn for 21 days informing passersby of the hearing date, as if any of them care.
By now, depending on when the neighborhood meeting was held, if any, months have already gone by. Time passes quickly, however, since you will have been busy circulating letters, taking pictures, and preparing your case to present before the ZBA. There is a list of documents you need to take with you to the hearing. All of this is just for the zoning variance, mind you. You still need to get the building permit. That will only take an additional two weeks if they are not backed up, which they inevitably will be. No wonder some contractors don’t even want to take jobs like this within the city limits.
So if you do plan on building a deck, my advice is to begin the process as early as possible. January would have worked good for us. At least we would have been able to enjoy the deck in the spring and entire summer. Instead, I am hoping for a nice fall and a late winter.
Nancy Hanratty
Fox Chase
Clean up your lawn, renters
Dear renter,
Welcome to our neighborhood. Our street is a nice street, quiet and well maintained by everyone who lives here. However, we would appreciate if you also respect the property you are renting by keeping up with the appearance of the block. Cut your lawn before it looks like a jungle. Pull those weeds and pick up those piles of newspapers on your lawn that you walk by every day.
This would be appreciated by all your neighbors who take pride in their neighbored. Join us, please!
Kathleen Weber
Sun Valley
Is Martina for Trump?
I suspect Rep. Martina White told a “white lie” when she was quoted in last week’s issue on the “Trump Effect.”
She claimed she is “undecided on how she will vote in the presidential race.” However, on a nationally televised interview with Fox and Friends from July 24, Rep. White was asked point blank, “Do you line up with how Donald Trump views the direction we should be going?” Her response was an unequivocal,“Yes.” It’s available to view online.
Furthermore, she proudly displays a Trump lawn sign outside of her apartment in Parkwood! White also seems perfectly comfortable with Trump’s inflammatory and racially charged rhetoric.
Now I know this is a mostly Democratic neighborhood and she has to straddle the fence for votes but you can’t flip-flop on supporting Donald Trump and expect voters not to notice.
We’re too smart for her “white lies.”
Stephanie Gladney
Parkwood
Hillary is more qualified
This is about qualifications. Someone in the White House who knows what they are doing. If Hillary Clinton was to try to be the CEO of one of Trump’s businesses, first thing he would want to know before she ever got an interview was what are her qualifications, experience and has she any know-how to sit in any top-level seat? And the answer would be no.
She’s not a business person. So why does Trump with no political experience think he can be a president of a big country? At least Obama was a U.S. senator and a constitutional lawyer. Something Trump knows nothing about. You can’t win on bad temperament, ego, greed, lying, hiding taxes, being a draft dodger, saying bigoted things, fueling hate toward minorities, being a womanizer and not knowing the facts and/or knowing what the job entails.
So to Donald Trump supporters, think again. And to Trump, you are sure making yourself look so not qualified in an arena you have no “business” in.
Carlton Williams
Rhawnhurst
