One is never too old to think and to learn. I thought.
I learned a new perspective.
Besides making colossal errors such as Ramsey Town Center, the City of Ramsey is in danger of over-regulating things to where discretionary enforcement would need to be relied upon, and anytime that discretionary enforcement is all between you and the municipal power, you are at risk.
At risk of someone with a grudge, and a phone to complain. At risk of present status being scrutinized because of a history of neighbor dissatisfaction going back to 1992, more or less. At risk that truly innocuous present activity will be stepped on with the steel heel of law enforcement.
We don't need that, at least not in that part of "Old" Ramsey where people want to be on their 1+ acre lots, and left alone and not intruding into their neighbors' business or wanting the city police to intrude unless there is true crime, or unless the neighbors from hell live in the neighborhood, and are loud or let their dog(s) loose to mess up your yard and your walking experience in it.
Otherwise, quiet neighbors with their dog on an exercise line are good neighbors and appreciated by leaving them alone but being there to help if you notice the auto parked with the headlights left on, etc.
There are people with that world view and value system in Ramsey, and they also are a big part of the population in Ramsey. The "just let us be" segment.
So, going into things I imagined that because I had personal cause to see the Kiefer life suffer a little disruption that the special meeting was a good thing.
I have very mixed feelings, now that I went, listened, looked at the exhibits which were not available before the meeting, etc.
City of Ramsey was making a mountain out of a molehill not because of any egregiousness of the current status quo, but because of history, and that can lead to things that are unwholesome. That motivation was disavowed, but at play.
You run for or hold office, make an enemy or two, and someone from clear across town can complain about your home and cutilege.
("Cutilege" is fancy-legalese for "grounds and outbuildings.")
At the meeting there was collateral mention of a problem "that goes back to 1992" with the particular individual and property at issue, and their neighbors, but the repeated mantra was, "We are only looking at the ordinance and at this one case."
If it had been openly characterized as looking at it in the context of site/personal history, that's one thing, but enforcing a hyper-technical violation of an over-broad ordinance and saying it is proper enforcement of and by itself, apart from history or extenuating circumstances either way, is false and unfair if that claimed framework is untrue, and it is gross over-reaching if true.
Things need fixing.
Because of my dislike for Keith Kiefer I was envisioning using the exhibit views of the Rivlyn situation to show him as a bad guy, a scofflaw.
Instead, the opening aerial photo is an autumn photo from perhaps a year ago, my street, my home, the one top middle property with the little tan 1987 Honda Civic wagon at the front in front of the tree line is where I live. Parked anywhere else but there or in the driveway the Honda would have had to be driven through tree branches every time it was driven to reach the road. Over winter, with the snow plowed as it is in Ramsey, the thing was stashed with a friend with seven acres, but not on "bituminous or concrete."
Get real!
It was the third auto in a three-adult household. It had 215,000 miles on it at the time and an overheating problem, but it was operable, driven, licensed, used, and parked off the driveway so that the two autos in the two-car garage could come and go without the hassle of moving things out and back, or risking a fender-bender in a narrow driveway between windbreak rows of 20+ year-old arbor vita trees on each side of the driveway, landscaping with a purpose and appeal.
That risk of damage to the newer two vehicles would be a stupid risk to take. Why should Ramsey say it has to be? Answer: No good reason.
The neighbors all on their 1+ acre, well/septic system land, not hooked up, not wanting to be, not on "MUSA" services, just folks wanting police protection when crime is threatened, but otherwise to be left alone.
Left alone by one another, by officials. People who moved to Ramsey to not be crowded. To have that 1+ acre lot and the buffer that it entails.
Police should stop criminals, not citizen enjoyment of their land.
There was a neighbor in back who built a chicken-coop across the property line, not on his property, his 0.85 acre, and that was hard to fix even though a clear nuisance and a trespass. But how the family's third working and regularly used auto is parked could be a hassle point and now readily subjected to strict enforcement.
Were that Honda to have not died a few months ago and not be on the grounds for that reason, it could be selected as a target for some arbitrarily motivated badge-heavy cop. That's Ramsey law, at present. We don't need that. We don't want that. The likelihood of it happening in our neighborhood is small. The possibility is always there. The risk and threat are ever-present.
So, I still think Keith Kiefer is a turkey.
But I also think in this instance he was treated unfairly.
His technical violation this time of an over-broad ordinance requirement sounded a warning to me, that policing neighborhood nuisance must be done in a way that would not potentially criminalize a fairly prevalent range of generally accepted conduct.
Back to the opening image. Look at the various properties. Only one, lower right-hand corner, looks abusive. The property next door to ours - good neighbors - and they've a paved pad and the vehicles are licensed current. Nicer if they were not there, but not my business, not my call, not near at all to being cause to think them bad people or bad neighbors. It is a part of the neighborhood, and that is it.
THE RAMSEY CITY COUNCIL NEEDS TO FIX THINGS SO THAT WHAT IS PREVALENT IN A NEIGHBORHOOD SUCH AS THAT THE IMAGE DEPICTS IS NOT CRIMINALIZED BY OVER-REACHING ORDINANCES CREEPING INTO EXISTENCE. THINGS MERIT FURTHER ATTENTION, AND AMENDMENT. DISCRETION AND POWER TO CURB TRUE NUISANCE IS ALWAYS A PROPER CITY FUNCTION, BUT PLACING THINGS IN A CONTEXT WHERE SOMETHING TRULY MUCH SHORT OF TRUE NUISANCE IS SEIZED ON, IS NOT GOOD GOVERNMENT. MERLIN HUNT WAS AT THE MEETING, FEELING THAT WAY, AND ON REFLECTION THIS TIME I AGREE WITH HIM THAT THE POLICING REACH EXCEEDED THE ACTUAL PRESENT NEED. HIS VIEW WENT A BIT FURTHER THAN THAT, BUT THAT FAR, WE AGREE.
Finally, this is all Google could help me with in the search the window line atop the screen shot shows.
GOOGLE RETURNS ONLY TWO mentions of the heat against how you park, if "within the MUSA areas." Try this - two hits, neither showing what/where the "MUSA areas" are.
The transcript for public review prior to the special meeting was without the exhibits. One exhibit was a map, showing some, perhaps not all "MUSA areas." That map is nowhere on the City's website. Nada. Zilch.
Has some arbitrary planner at the Norman castle with a pencil and without a brain drawn the family home inside, or outside of the "MUSA areas"? I noticed on a quick view after the meeting ended, that the Bauer Gun Club is now its own "MUSA area." Jerry Bauer had his son-in-law on council, David Elvig, and sewer-water got routed there to enable otherwise too dense a level of housing, atop the shooting lead, however well remediated it was/is. That's politics in Ramsey, and the rest of the MUSA area the map/exhibit showed was this meandering line along the map. It would be nice if that were posted on the city website and maintained.
It would be nice if/when the line gets redrawn by a bureaucrat that the people affected have prior notice and a right to be heard in opposition - but, this is Ramsey. It is not done that way. The frigging map's not even posted on the city website, but was an exhibit used against the Kiefers, at hearing.
It's the Ramsey version of due notice.
Local government should not risk over-burdening many, because of the sins of a few. And local government should give TRUE due notice. And if the homes in a neighborhood are not on city/MetCouncil sewer-water, but on well/septic, then the map should reflect the reality and situation on the ground, not some arbitrary planner's will, or that of James Norman or others with arbitrary intent.
So, the photo area this post started with - is it inside, outside of the "MUSA areas"? And don't make it a shell game, guess which shell your house is under. Publish the frigging map.
Try this - Is the Haas Steffen home inside/outside of the "MUSA areas"? The Elvig home? The Gamec home? Your home?
It seems so phony and arbitrary - when there was a MUSA line, that was one thing. But Jerry Bauer wanted to exploit the gun club land and John Peterson wanted to put dense housing in a cornfield way north of the purported high density region politicians had advocated in seeking office, and not all the animals on Animal Farm are equal - in the book the pigs were more equal than the others.
___________UPDATE______________
Have you noticed all the dead Norway pine trees along Ramsey Blvd., around the stretch where they messed up the historic water table via ditching done in order to route sewer from the Alpine Woods [Peterson at Sunfish Blvd.] area to the Gun Club? It's not good to mess with the earth, with wetlands, since it is the slowed wetland percolation in our sand rich area that purifies surface water on its way deeper into the region's underground locations where wells tap household water. That ditching damage to the wetland status quo was uncalled for, and done to allow the sewer routing that many in the community opposed, for multiple reasons; but which was a boon to land ownership interests pushing the change. And a boon to Met. Council coffers via hookup fee revenue. What's good for some is not good for all. For those dead Norway trees, the root structure is broad but not deep. They prospered before the water table was tampered with. They don't look so good now.