City wants to make home auto repair difficult

[Stout72]

What is this world coming to?

The City Council of Fairfield, CA, is introducing an ordinance to make it a citable offense to repair vehicles in a residential area if the vehicle does not belong to you. For owners, outdoor repair work that takes more than two days, or is being done on more than two vehicles at a time may also be a citable offense.

What a load! The proposed ordinance is supposed to target problem residences in town where individuals operate psuedo auto repair shops, and junk cars clogging residential streets. But it could unfairly affect people like you and me who tinker with our rigs (as well as relatives' and friends' vehicles who we may be helping) in our own driveways or out on the street in front of our houses. Hey, I work slow, so a lot of my tinkering takes place over time. It also leaves the door open for malicious neighbors harassing us with complaints.

At least it's not an ordinance...yet. A second reading and final approval is coming up in a month. I'm planning on being there to speak out against this lunacy.

Anybody out there have a similar ordinance, or were able to defeat one? Watch out, you may be next!

[Alexis]

man that sucks.......i got away with workin in the street all my nieghbor think i'm lucky for that, so do I. I live in a really cool nieghbor hood though. I got a few nieghbors who own old car/trucks. But no one really care or bug about it. i had my blazer on jackstand for almost a year. my nighbor had his mazda on jackstands for about 2 weeks before the city came bugging him, lol. We also got a rule about havin a car on jackstand for more then 72 hours..... i think it is cause he rents his housing he got busted. Also you got to put a tarp over your car if it sits long.......i broke this rule plenty of times.... But really around here it depend where you live. if you go across the rail road tracks or go into the south part of the city you'll have the cops and city poeple on your ass......lots of apartments in these area and old housing.

[paintpyro]

We got the same deal down here in Southern Cal. I actually got cited because they thought my truck was non operational. I filled up the flat with fix a flat, fired up the engine (dual flowmasters under bed, no outlet pipes, no bed floor ), drove it around the block and back in. The whole neighborhood knew that it could run

[andyr354]

Boy its nice living in northern KS!
I can do pretty much whatever I want out here. My nearest neighbor is 1.5 miles away.
I agree that that is not right. If they want to crack down on the main problem do it the right way, not by punishing all the inocents at the same time.
Just one of the reasons I never have or will live in town!
I also like having target practice in my back yard, that could be a problem in town.........

[gangforward]

This is EXACTLY why I left the Seattle area - got damm tired of idiots with good intentions that take that more liberty away from us.

Country living is much better!

[AndrewDT]

That sounds like California. You guys need to organize and get some board members with some common sense on the city counsel.

[paintpyro]

AndrewDT, the problem is we are outnumbered by latte drinkers

[Stroker]

I've been told we have a very simular law here in Wichita,Ks. Personally I've never heard of it being inforced, but I guess it's always a possibilty if you had a a$$ for a neighbor.

[Project1970]

Dang, I'm just glad there's nothing like that in Chandler, yet...I'm over at my dad's almost every weekend working on something! He's got that Corsica parked out front too, that they just move around once in a while...horrid little car that nobody wants to drive anymore since it leaks coolant so badly, aside from the fact that it's been wrecked a time or two and is FUGLY...

[Blue_71]

i must be lucky, ive got both of my truck sitting beside the church in my feild, plan veiw of the neighbors too, and no one complains.. i've actually had people from church come over and compliment me on them and the neighbor has talked to me about them before, talking about how good the 2wd is looking and how good the 4x4 runs... they dont even seem to mind the open headers and revving the 4x4 up to about 3500 when i'm *cough* "tuning" it

[Jackal2k9]

lol you only rev to 3500 when you tune it? man i gotta check for backfires ALL the time... run it to the red line when you get there move the dial back a bit and go a little further Actually for the sake of your motor dont do taht.... but do make sure it dont back fire within 200 rpms of redline... thats a dead giveaway to a bad tune...

[crazy longhorn]

Poop on the city! We pay taxes.....right? When the city tells me no more work on me hotrod.....Im moving! here comes the burnout.......

[StingRay]

We have some bull$hit laws a bit like that here and it pi$$es me off. My wife and I are looking to get an acreage for just that reason. At the very least we are looking for a 1/2 acre lot in town ( one particular old neighborhood has lots that large) so that the yard is soooooo big that nobody knows you have lots of cars or knows what you are doing to them cause it's too damn far inside your yard for them to see.

[Randy70C-10]

I got ticketed last summer for an engine sitting in my driveway. It had only been there 2 days!

[mtdave2]

you ever see those ppl whos yard looks like a junkyard? 3 cars on blocks, old ovens and washers in the yard, pile of trash. 4 foot weeds...... its becasue of these people we have all these dum rules.

get this, in san antonio its illegal to wash your car at home. the water will drail into the storm drains. so it violates the stormdrain laws. lol, its not enforced but they could!

[72shadetree]

here if you have more than 5 that can be seen from road they must be tagged but i cant see the road im so far out in the woods

[Longhorn Man]

They passed a law here in Columbus that is similar.
If you were to read the ordinance, most likely it does have exclusions for working on family's vehicles.
The way you describe your law is much more forgiving than the one here.

[Nova_Cobra64]

Our city started enforcing that last summer. Fortunately, they seem to have common sense as to what is parked because it is a winter vehicle, what is a project, and what is just junk. The one guy in town that has an absolute mess gets around it by licencing them all as classics for $120 Canadian per year each.

Unfortunately, it seems some people on council are starting to get out of hand with this and if I am ever pestered to move my black truck when it is parked in summer, they will see some resistance.

[Nova_Cobra64]

Where's Lucky59, I thought he would have replied already. He has his own town, so he can have 10+ vehicles sitting around. Actually, I must say that for an acreage, it is very clean for the number of cars.

[ChevLoRay]

Here in Arkansas, one of the nearby municipalities has made it illegal to have a washing machine on the front porch, nor can you have a recliner on the porch to sit in while you're washing your clothes. I haven't heard about any of them making it illegal to hang out your wash on a clothesline in the front yard.

If your vehicle won't run, you have to put it on concrete blocks (okay, cinder blocks for you yankees), otherwise you can't take the tires off of it. If you have a good tree in the front yard, you can pull the engine out of your vehicle, but you might think about leaving it hanging on the chain fall, 'cause somebody else might want to use the chain fall, too.

Nothing was said about the dogs under the front porch, or feeding the chickens through the cracks and knot holes in the floor of the house.

Oh, you can NOT sublet the basement of the outhouse! Something about sanitation regulations, I think.

Seriously, it gripes me to think that we pay our taxes only to have some of our elected (paid) officials cater to some hoity-toity upper crust elitist who went "slumming" one day and saw that people are forced to work on their own vehicles because they dont' have the money to pay the Lexus dealership to maintain it for them. I think they should mind their own business.

In my subdivision, any vehicle is supposed be "operable". Otherwise, you can't keep it. When I got some flack about my '83 F-100, that had been hit (hard) on the left front, I showed 'em it would run, then proceeded to drive it in circles and left a lot of rubber on the driveway and street to prove it! Only problem, is that it would only turn left! Still, it ran good and had a new transmission! Windows were intact and the radio worked, too.

[1971Stepside]

hey paintpyro I here ya! We have those latte drinkers here to...they just stand around an look at their truck and *****! inside j/k

[paintpyro]

LOL 1971 Stepside, I was wonderin if you were gonna take that one. I seem to remember you and someone havinga post on the subject.

[O'l Buck]

And my wife wonders why I laugh at her everytime she brings up moving to town...........not in a million years would I move to town.

[supercheyenne]

We have an ordinance here that pretty much has the same rules, but unless someone complains, nobody get in trouble. There are also legal ways around them, using a tarp to cover the vehicle, etc.

Basically if your neighbors don't like you, your hosed. I bribe mine by loaning out tools.

[speesh]

I had the same problem, here in Kern county California it only applies if someone complains. My cranky old neighbor called on me because I have about 10 different cars sitting around on my half acre. He complained because his dang dog always barks at us and he thought we were harassing it!
So I had to build a fence and put most of them behind it, so I passed the inspection, then while I was building it the old coot comes out yelling about "That aint good enough, I will see you in court!" Lucky for me, the old codger croaked, but now I have my place looking better anyway......