Our inspector has visited this site and has initiated a public nuisance case with a deadline of June 4, 2012. The inspector will follow up to make sure it gets cleared.

This is so unneighborly. Approaching your neighbor personally would be much kinder than siccing the City on them. Afraid to approach the owner of the problem property in Boylan Heights? Contact me and I will be happy to confidentially appeal to the neighbor to fix the problem. Anonymity is great but not necessarily friendly.

Or leave an anonymous note under my door at 422 Cutler Street and I will be glad to investigate the problem and contact the owner of the property before the City has to pay them a visit. Then I will send an update through our neighborhood Google Group.

I am sorry to see ClickFix becoming a vehicle for petty complaints which could be resolved with a little personal interaction..

Elizabeth Dunbar

I don't think your response is very neighborly and is exactly the type of personal interaction I'd rather avoid. You imply that I'm unneighborly, unfriendly, afraid of my neighbors and attacking them by "siccing" (1. To set upon; attack. 2. To urge or incite to hostile action) the city on them. I'm going to choose to think that you didn't mean it that way, but when you start your comment with "This is so unneighborly" it's hard to take it as anything but a personal attack.

It sounds like you want to do what the city does but have you mediate things instead of the government officials and use your private group instead of the public forum of SeeClickFix. Hopefully all the city employees are neighborly so I'm not sure I see any benefit of doing this through private actors instead of public ones.

I've submitted these types of request before in Boylan Heights and Glenwood South and find they get taken care of quite quickly. This is the first time I've seen the response be that there is a "public nuisance case" initiated. Normally the response is just that they say they'll clean it up and they do. In fact I submitted another case right down the street at the same time yesterday and it's already been cleaned up. I'm not sure what the city means by "initiated a public nuisance case". Maybe it just means no one was home so they left a form, maybe it means there have been recurring problems at this location, maybe it means the homeowner was a jerk about it and so the inspector made it an official case. Whatever the reason, I expect the result will be better because it was a city official and not me (or you).

If you want to be neighborly, have all the sidewalks in Boylan Heights (and the Glenwood South/Cameron Village area) maintained so they're not overgrown with vegetation. That would make it easier for people to walk the neighborhood and allow everyone to be more neighborly.

Initiating a Public Nuisance Case means that the a city staff member was dispatched to the site, paper work was filed and probably a couple of letters sent. You're looking at about a $75 - $100 cost to the city and its tax payers to notify the property owner and begin the nuisance abatement process against the property owner, so in effect, you have urged the city to take what could considered to be a hostile action against the property owner.

So why did this instance result in a Public Nuisance Case and the other three I submitted not? I would expect it's because of circumstances particular to this location. Whatever the reason, the point is there are rules about keeping your sidewalks maintained and procedures in place to handle the situation when someone breaks those rules. If you don't like the rules or the procedures, then you can run for office and try to change them. If you'd rather I didn't use SCF when your sidewalk is overrun, then don't let your sidewalks get overrun. If you're worried about your neighbors' sidewalks then talk to your neighbors. They can maintain their yards or plant different things near the sidewalk that don't require much maintenance, it's really not that hard to do. I would contend that the person creating the public nuisance is the one being hostile/unneighborly, not the person reporting it nor the city for enforcing the rules.