RE: Parking on lawns??? (Full Version)

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creationtalk -> RE: Parking on lawns??? (5/16/2008 8:11:32 PM)

I guess from the previous posts that I am a redneck. I have a place to park that looks like "lawn" to the uninitiated. Of course, most of my driveway looks like lawn as well. Very few of my neighbors have a defined place to park vehicles that separates it from "lawn" though they may always park in the same general area. One neighbor parks her car in a carport, but when the car is not there, it looks like the "lawn" has a sunshade. Here if you have a "lawn" and you don't want anyone to park on it, put a fence around it. We do not have "on the street" parking in my neighborhood. The streets are barely wide enough for two vehicles and if the two are large trucks, then one has to pull off the side of the road so the other can pass. Not to mention my driveway is 1/8 mi long.



karlie -> RE: Parking on lawns??? (5/16/2008 8:15:00 PM)

Oh man, in my neighborhood, that would be grounds for getting a visitor from an officer! But then, everyone has a driveway and garage and most have two car wide driveways, so there is no reason to.

Even cars parked long term around here IN a driveway(not running or moved for months here) will get you cited and fined and finally towed if it's still there so many days later. If you're going to have a non running car in the driveway, you better make sure it's maintained and clean enough that no one realizes it doesn't run! Most nicer neighborhoods in my city are very picky with that and it's enforced.



Covaan_Meshuga -> RE: Parking on lawns??? (5/17/2008 1:03:30 AM)

I once lived in a place where I got a "fixit ticket" for my lawn having a few dandelions, and I DO mean just a few! My husband had died a few weeks earlier, and as happens, I had no energy -- besides suddenly rearing two children on my own -- and I got a stinkin' "fixit ticket"?

In my town, I admit to parking my camper on the street at my curb in front of my house, which made my next door neighbor pretty upset. And in order to comply with the laws, we have to drive it at least once a week, because otherwise, it will be ticketed. We drive it faithfully that once a week!

I am fortunate that the cars on lawns around this neighborhood are not junkers but vehicles people use. I also understand that some areas are unincorporated so they aren't set up for street parking, and some simply have no common sidewalks, parking area, etc.

Once in a while, someone will actually park their car across or in my drive way, and that irks me beyond belief. I have been held "prisoner" by such more than once. Those people? I wish they would park their cars in their lawns, if that is all they have other than my driveway!



stellaluna -> RE: Parking on lawns??? (5/17/2008 9:14:43 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Covaan_Meshuga
Once in a while, someone will actually park their car across or in my drive way, and that irks me beyond belief. I have been held "prisoner" by such more than once. Those people? I wish they would park their cars in their lawns, if that is all they have other than my driveway!

That's against the law here. If a car blocks your driveway and you don't know who it belongs to, you just call the PD and they have it towed away.



Covaan_Meshuga -> RE: Parking on lawns??? (5/17/2008 10:41:55 AM)

I wish it were that simple. It is not technically against the law here to park on the street in front of someone else's driveway. The street is public property and people may park anywhere they choose on the street, even in front of my driveway. They will be ticketed, but they may park there anyway, and the police have no automatic right to have the car towed.



stellaluna -> RE: Parking on lawns??? (5/17/2008 12:09:50 PM)

Stinky! You should suggest it. [;)]



Auben -> RE: Parking on lawns??? (5/18/2008 8:47:56 PM)

quote:

I think our city ordinance doesn't allow a car to sit in one spot longer than a few weeks in view of others--whether it's in the yard or in a driveway. That effectively gets rid of junk vehicles citywide, or forces the owners to keep them in their garages.


Or vehicles people just don't like.

We had to remove our garage door from the rails and let the air out of the tires to get our VW bus in just because someone decided VWs were 'junky.' Its a westfalia campmobile and I'm not going to drive it every 10 days for the letter of the law. I just don't have the space on my To-Do list. It's licensed, running, has all its parts, and is sitting on a paved surface that should be enough for anyone.

IMHO, it's no ones business how often you drive your car/motorcycle/van/camper. If you're counting down the days until I drive it again get a life.

The problem here is that we all have different ideas of what a neighborhood should look like. And we all have different ideas about the ability to force others into our own view of a 'good' neighborhood. This would all be much easier if they handed you a copy of the city ordinances before you buy or rent a house somewhere. Then we could keep all the lawn parkers and hippie gardeners in one town and the folks that need spotless lawns and drives in another.

There are lots of things I think are tacky...lawn 'art' like gnomes, flamingos, deer statues, bent over cut outs and the like. That doesn't mean I think we should have an ordinance against them. Or if we did have one that I would report someone just because I find them aesthetically repulsive. If its something to look at that doesn't affect you personally, look the other way. We have enough problems on this planet...people parking on lawns or not mowing their grass should be the least of our worries.

I find it ironic that people pursue individuality in a multitude of public forms but any housing or living style diverging from white middle class suburbia is stereotyped as "red neck" ie ignorant and lazy. While sometimes that is true we can see from the varied responses in this thread that it is not always true. Often people have practical reasons for for their decisions which some little town committee which met 40 years ago can't know. These type of ordinances always result in headaches for city government as little old ladies with nothing to do but keep their yard up clash with working single moms with very little free time.

Personally I am so tired of this subject. I live in a small rural town surrounded by retirees on every side. Most of them are very gracious, lovely people. The rest seem to take every deviation from the norm as a personal threat to their property values and how people driving through town will judge them.



Covaan_Meshuga -> RE: Parking on lawns??? (5/18/2008 9:18:56 PM)

Okay. I admit that I live in a smaller city, so what we are told by the city may not be the top-notch scientific stuff of big cities. So since there are so many views on this subject, I looked up what bothers me the most: the pollution cause by leaving cars parked on the lawn. To me, it looks like somebody doesn't care about the environment or the water we must drink/use. And this is what my city told us in a city-wide document sent to all residences not long ago: don't park on the lawn, because you are causing ground water pollution, you may break the water pipes that cross your lawn, and you may break the gas pipes, causing a fire.

However, when I looked this up on the Internet, the sites there disagree. Read page 2 of http://www.etowahriver.org/Pollution-pamphlet.pdf. Many sites said to wash your car while it is parked on the grass, with stipulations.

Read the article at http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=186332&ac=PHnws.

Several sites said that by city ordinance, cars must be parked on asphalt, cement, etc, and not on grass, but most were apparently not about pollution but about aesthetics.

Okay!!



stellaluna -> RE: Parking on lawns??? (5/19/2008 9:17:56 AM)

re: city ordinances

I'm sure there are people that move into my city that have no idea what the ordinances are. When I move to another city, I will have to check into that myself. My city doesn't allow:

1) parking in front of someone else's driveway
2) parking in your lawn in such a way that it blocks a sidewalk
3) parking any vehicle in view of others for an extended length of time without moving it
4) parking any vehicle that isn't stickered (registered and inspected) in view of others
5) dumping of any sort of fluid from a vehicle outside an approved container (there are containers around town for antifreeze, oil, etc.)
6) carports used for storage of anything except vehicles

And we just had a program called Operation Clean Sweep citywide...in which inspectors drove down every street to look for violations of ordinances that require you to keep your property clean. If you had items in your yard that were considered junk, you were given a notice that you had two weeks to get rid of it, otherwise the city removed it for you and charged you to do it. We also have weekends designated as clean up weekends, in which various civic groups volunteer to go into particular neighborhoods and to clean up alleys, vacant lots, etc.

This is not a small town--there are nearly 200,000 people in our vicinity, but none of this is particularly different from anywhere else I've ever lived, so I suspect these ideas about how to keep your yard may be regional?



meg4 -> RE: Parking on lawns??? (5/19/2008 10:20:13 AM)

I don't see what the difference is environmentally in parking on pavement and parking on grass. If something is leaking, it will leak onto pavement just as much as it would on grass, and when it rains the leaked fluid will be washed onto the lawn anyway. And a permanently parked vehicle probably leaks less than one that is running.

Where I live hardly anyone has a paved driveway anyway. Most are just dirt and gravel. And my house is so far off the road that you would have to be in my yard or driveway to see where cars are parked anyway.



fluffmonkey -> RE: Parking on lawns??? (5/19/2008 12:25:09 PM)

Where I live in the country, with very long graveled drive way and we park on our lawn but we have a specific area we usually park on the side of house we also have garage but it only holds my moms car because of all stuff in there like the mowers and work out equip.

but house I lived in before had a paved drive way and people would park on sides of street or drive way if they had them but no many had my dad actually made our drive way.

Although where we live now we would to have it paved but thats going to cost good thousands of dollars...



2shaye -> RE: Parking on lawns??? (5/19/2008 12:43:32 PM)

I think, in my area, which is an incorporated planned community, people take the value of their houses very, very seriously. If a neighbor does something that the majority find offensive, then it brings the value of the neighborhood down. Property value is NO laughing matter here! When the value of our houses goes up by hundreds of thousands and someone on our street (or even our community, or our city) wants to run a junk yard out of their front yard, that affects everyone. People choose to live here because of the way the neighborhoods look.

I appreciate it when the city steps in and keeps things looking nice. If I didn't, then I could move 20 miles away and do whatever I wanted in my front yard. I'd pay a heck of a lot less for a house, too!



meg4 -> RE: Parking on lawns??? (5/19/2008 1:00:46 PM)

I can see the point of wanting property values to be high if you are planning to sell your house, but I would prefer to have a low property value so I don't have to pay so much property tax. I don't plan on ever selling my house.

(That doesn't mean I keep my place trashy to lower it--I try to keep it looking nice. I just hear people all the time who are worried about their property value going down, and I think it's strange because they are not planning to sell their property either. Maybe it's a pride thing.)



Covaan_Meshuga -> RE: Parking on lawns??? (5/19/2008 1:22:32 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: meg4
I can see the point of wanting property values to be high if you are planning to sell your house, but I would prefer to have a low property value so I don't have to pay so much property tax. I don't plan on ever selling my house.

(That doesn't mean I keep my place trashy to lower it--I try to keep it looking nice. I just hear people all the time who are worried about their property value going down, and I think it's strange because they are not planning to sell their property either. Maybe it's a pride thing.)

We don't plan to ever sell either, but I want my house, my neighborhood, to be decent.

If my neighbor has unused cars and junk outside, whether on the street or on their lawn, they are known to attract mice and rats, which crawl into them to live and use the materials there for nesting. I DON'T like mice and rats. Grass begins to grow under them, and trash, leaves, and other debris collect under them.

We live in a city with paved streets, curbs, and sidewalks. If their cars are parked on the lawn, it looks trashy. Maybe that's just me. Maybe I need to get over it.

Now, while I am trouncing all that, I must admit that my camper doesn't look that great parked out on the street, because that just is not usually done here. Furthermore, when I bought it, I could not afford a nice sleek one that looks streamlined and gorgeous: it's a simple camper and not that new. I am sure that my neighbors would rather it was parked elsewhere, but it is parked in the only place we have, since we can't get it down the driveway. Furthermore, they just want it gone so they can park in front of our house.



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