Why are we being punished?
Because that is what regulators live for.
Reminds me of battered wife syndrome. Move and get your freedom back.
I hate planners.
Beg permission to pay money to improve the King's House, peasant. And don't forget to pay for upkeep, insurance, and The King's Rent, lest The King take his property back.
Groveling would be good, but I wonder if touching your forelock might gain you favor...
My research focus is on this very thing. How design professionals and planners are ruining people’s lives. Or something like that. There’s a growing philosophy in the design profession that we and our government friends need to get out of the way and let people build.
But you really should move. California doesn’t deserve you.
Sounds like your little slice of Europe.
To those telling you to “just move”:
H.L. Mencken’s classic one-liner: “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong.”
There is no such thing anymore as home “ownership”. “Private property” no longer exists. Not only do you pay for your habitation, you also pay for the people who dictate what you can and cannot do with it.
I would not live in Cali ... even if the state paid me to live there.
Sell the house and move to Alabama. The county might charge a hundred bucks for some building license fee and there’s virtually no inspection of anything. Your neighbors might chat excessively over NCAA football but they’d be there when grassfires occur, or some help is needed. I can’t think of a single reason why anyone would be thinking long-term to stay in California.
Wow, that’s incredible. A friend in South Los Altos not far from you did some remodeling and added some square footage. He tripped the requirement for a residential fire sprinkler system which was several thousands of dollars. Adding insult to injury, his original 3/4 inch water connection was deemed to be too small to operate the sprinklers, so it cost him a bundle more to upgrade to a 1 inch line fro pm the street to his house. Then, the water company hit him with hundreds of dollars of fees to change from a 3/4 tap off the main to a 1 inch tap. The last insult is he has to pay a monthly “capacity charge” to the water company just in case he should ever need to use the higher volume of water to save his house from burning down. That’s another $600 per year just for the privilege of MAYBE once in a lifetime needing to use the full capacity of his new pipe.
We did a modest kitchen upgrade and paid thousands of dollars to install unwanted LED lighting and run AC to all of our smoke alarms.
Now, to top it all off, the FAAs “NextGen” flight plan system for the South Bay has nonstop aircraft flying down one single corridor over Los Altos and Palo Alto. The planes are below 2,000 feet ( not above 4,000 ft) 30 miles away from SFO. One plane gets just about out of earshot when another enters...it is nonstop jet noise from 5 AM to midnight every day the past few months.
Your permit questionnaire asked if you were going to increase noise in your town. That is a stupid question for a homeowner. But here we have the FAA blanketing a good chunk of the Peninsula with nonstop jet noise in a very narrow corridor and the bastards had a “negative finding” for noise in their environmental report.
Government really, really sucks.
Idaho looks better all the time.
I live right near you and went through this too... lets just say I lost big time... even with a good lawyer.
Move to the santa cruz mtns in LG and you can do what you want (permits optional).
#@%%# control freaks just want to see how many hoops you’ll jump thru like a trained monkey to obey your masters. Then maybe you get a treat. If you really can’t deal with the room as it is, moving seems like the best option. California in the rearview mirror isn’t so bad. There are a lot of alternatives.
I have no idea what that means and a precursory look at the City of Campbell website had no added information. That strikes as odd, as it seems the City would have information on an exact definition of this zone.
I mention this because I lived a bit north east of you in Benicia. A friend was going to do a remodel and was complaining of the 'red tape' as he lived in a "historical district". His issues were similar to yours (though not as in depth).
Long story short, he asked for and received a map defining the district's legal boundaries. His street was on the edge and the line was drawn down the middle of the street, he was thus not in the district itself.
If you have not investigated that aspect, or similar classification requirements, it may be worth doing so.
Ten years ago I hired an Architect to draw plans for a kitchen remodel and to add 174 sq ft to our house. The Los Alamitos, Ca planning department signed off, the building department signed off and told me to come over to pickup my permit. When I tried to do so I was informed that the planning director had changed her mind and unsigned the department’s approval. I asked why, she told me and her answer made no sense so I asked to see this in the city code. Couldn’t show me, but it was my tough luck. The lawyers I shared this with wanted to fight (two pro bono!) while the contractors and Architects said “don’t fight city hall”. I let it go until recently. With the same plans in hand, new engineering (yes you read that right), new energy calcs (that too), and about $5000 for that and the plan check, permit and all the other fees, I can finally put a shovel into my dirt. After this is done we’re outta here!
I also grew up in California as did our three children and all four of my grandparents. Two of my boys are planning out of state moves. When we leave we will be taking a very successful second generation business with us. The liberals, socialists, commies, loafers, illegals, sickos and the rest of the rude pukes have made life here too expensive and time consuming to be worth it.
We will be shopping for a new state to put roots down in. The ones that express a desire to secede from the union will be on top of the list.
Your ancestors would have started shooting people by now. Just saying.
L
Must be more Conservatives in this dump city than I thought. I feel you. This city is ridiculous. We can’t even use plastic bags at the store.
Make your home a sanctuary home, adding square feet will be subsidized.
This is probably not what you want to hear but ..
quit while you still have any self-respect.
There’s a limit and I hope you’ll reach it very soon. Meanwhile consider yourself part of the problem.