I say this as a former village resident of 13 years who learned about the nit-picking-by-the-book-to-the-letter worship of regulation when it came to time to sell a house and obtain the dreaded and confoundingly legal Certificate of Compliance, without which you could not (cannot?) sell your home.
The capper to the inspector's long list of mandatory maintenance minutiae (some of which had been waived through at the time of the purchase) was his requirement - - not a suggestion mind you.
A forum, news site and archive begun in February, 2007 about politics and the environment in Wisconsin. And elsewhere.
Folks learn that Shorewood is actually Nazi-ville only when they decide to sell their houses. One resident had to repave his garage at a cost of $2,000 because of a crack in the floor that was there when he bought the house. Another family selling their house had to remove a backyard lightpole that the buyer wanted to keep for security reasons; the wiring had been done by the previous homeowner and was considered "dangerous" by the Shorewood inspector. It hadn't caused any problems in the seller's ten years in the home, nor for the previous owners.
ReplyDeleteTo Anon: I had a friend who had the same garage flo8or crack issue but it cost him $6 or $8 grand. And we also had a rear yard lamp pole with a similar wiring issue that dated back years, too.
ReplyDeleteI hope you will not use the term "Nazi-like" on this or any other unneeded context, however.
It is inaccurate and inflammatory. Shorewood's policies define themselves.
Anonymous, I had BOTH of those experiences in trying to get the heck out of Shorewood -- except mine was a driveway crack that was there when I bought it, plus the backyard lighting that the inspector deemed dangerous (hmmm, he was an electrician and said he could fix it cheap, hmmm).
ReplyDeleteAnd Jim, I understand your distaste for the term used by Anonymous, but Shorewood can be pretty inflammatory itself. When I went to Shorewood Village Hall to meet with the inspector, his rationale for why Shorewood behaves this way was not to punish me for leaving the lovely burb -- to break me, although all the costs to sell just about did so.
Instead, he said it was to raise the prices of homes enough to "keep out those people," with more commentary to the same effect about just who "those people" were on the border of Shorewood just hankering to move into the village and run it down "like they do across the river," etc.
A family member with me from another burb was simply aghast at a village official speaking that way.
And don't even get me started about the schools, in my experience as a parent of a student with a disability. . . . Nice to be back in Milwaukee now, huh?
Your Neighbor Up the Street at 3233 :-)