Posted on 07/30/2018 6:43:31 AM PDT by george76
LAUREL, Md. Prince Georges County filed a legal case against a Laurel couple in their 90s over a wheelchair ramp in their own home. To avoid legal trouble, the elderly couples son tore down the ramp, trapping the woman in her own home. The county permitting department said the family had no permit to build a wheelchair ramp in front of their own home.
"I don't want my husband trying to lift me now," said 91 year old Evelyn Strahle.
Evelyn Strahle's husband David is 94 years old. "Two people had to put her in a wheelchair and lift her down those steps before we had it, said David.
A pile of lumber is all that remains of the wheelchair ramp that gave Evelyn freedom to leave her Laurel home.
It clips my wings. I can't do anything," said Evelyn.
Evelyn's son Bob built the ramp. He's in the construction trades. He didn't want his parents to pay the $5,000 they priced a ramp of this size. Bob bought $1,700 of lumber and built it himself.
"Very well built and I felt very safe on it always, explained Evelyn.
Then, a Prince George's County inspector came.
There was an inspector that showed up here twice when I was here and I asked him why couldn't he just inspect it and tell me if there was anything I needed to do to make any improvements on it so that it would fit permitting requirements but he said that wasn't the process and I had to go through the long route, explained son Bob Strahle.
Bob submitted plans and tried to file for a permit but was denied because he built the ramp before asking county government.
(Excerpt) Read more at wjla.com ...
I gotta love my Sweet Home Alabama.
I live in a rural county.
From the County web site, under Frequently Asked Questions:
Q. Does Elmore County require building permits or have zoning restrictions?
A. At present, there are no zoning restrictions or building permit requirements for property located in rural Elmore County. If the property in question is inside a planning jurisdiction of any municipality, the City Planning Department should be contacted for permit requirements. However, a development permit is required prior to any construction taking place on property located within a floodplain. For more information please call 334-567-1162.
Not true!
She's much safer now!
Why, if there were a fire, she might have inured herself going down the ramp!
Simple DIY construction permit rules in life:
1. If it’s visible from the street, you better get a permit.
2. If it’s in the backyard, maybe get a permit (something large like a swimming pool), maybe not (new sprinkler system).
3. If it’s indoors, it’s up to you as long as it’s not a big project, you can sneak your materials in under cover of darkness, and do the work yourself.
4. If you build it without a permit and get caught, you’ll have to usually rip it out.
Son Bob is in the construction trades and he didn’t know this? Come on! Maybe Bob’s elevator doesn’t reach the top floor.
Your comments provoke a violent reaction by me.
I would like to think your remark is sarcasm and would give you benefit of doubt but a construction permit for safety reasons? Maybe in some cases but my general reaction is BULL SPIT!
I live in the country, we don’t have permits so far, my projects are built to code, accepted practice, sound engineering and good sense without any help from meddling mindless gubment inspectors. Furthermore, if anyone is hurt it will be me and my family or visitors. I have a much greater interest in making things right than any inspector. I strongly suspect that the fellow who built the wheelchair ramp for his 91 year-old mother did not cut corners in his construction. He is, after all, a tradesman and should be at least over 60.
Attitudes underlying the comments made by yourself are the reason we got to the police state we live in now where reasonable solutions to problems can’t be worked out, “we have to follow the rules”. Either that or you are a licensed builder who wants to protect a monopoly enforced by codes. Taken to the extreme, and it can be and often is, one would be required to get a building permit to construct a flower bed on his own property.
We may need to follow standards to protect the public and to prevent eyesores in the community but we don’t need mindless conformity to every equally mindless rule and law that comes along. Some things are meant to be questioned and even disobeyed and everything but the strictest principles of morality and ethics is negotiable.
That was a pretty big ramp. I wonder if he would have gotten the permit for the ramp?
It is Prince George’s County, after all.
"Yep, and union protectionism."
It is also about control over people. Bureaucratic tyrants love tyranny.
Whatever happened to “a man’s home is his castle”. If I choose to risk **MY** safety, why is that YOUR business ??
Always get a permit before beginning any construction project. Its for safety reasons.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = =
TRUE!! to a point.
Like saying the red light & speed zone cameras are for ‘safety’.
If they were for ‘safety’ 10 (give or take) points would be attached to your DL and if you drove suspended may do a stretch in the County facility.
When people ‘catch on’ and start obeying the rules, the town/county has to make up for its investment by shortening the light span or put the cameras on hair triggers.
So, basically nothing more than a money making scheme, those that can ‘afford’ it keep going, those that can’t end up in more trouble as the ‘fines keep doubling’ etc
Last HOUSE I built from the ground up I got a mail in permit from the state fire marshal for the electric svc to the property and a permit from DEQ for the septic.
Nothing else-—But I certainly had to build it to code to get it insured and my insurance company sent inspectors out to check the plumbing and wiring several times. House was over 5000 square feet so it wasn’t a shack either
I can how replacing a lot of electrical or plumbing could potentially put people at risk in some situations but anyone who thinks these people should have had to remove their wheelchair ramp because they didn’t get a permit needs their head examined
I agree but in so doing you will be bankrupted.
Fact is, all of us should rise up for the injustice against one of us but we won’t. We are just comfortable enough to not want to make waves.
We are supposedly governed by our own consent. We let it go too far and the only way to get things back in line is not pretty or polite.
We end up with mindless rules for reasons. We have too many people who will not be responsible otherwise. Paul Harvey used to say it best, “Self-government without self-regulation will not work.”
I see nothing in the constitution that allows government to require a permit for anything.
My property: anyone thinking they should have the slightest input on what I do with it, unless and until I deprive another person of life liberty or property should be shot on the spot.
This is insane, another reminder of Orwell’s “1984.”
The posts should at least be 4x4. Cemented in a post hole with a galvanized ‘post hole’ protector. I would also add center support and use the hard plastic decking with tiny speed humps just enough to cause very little additional muscle to push, but enough to hold a wheelchair from going runaway.
The last city civil servant I dealt with building permits was young, morbidly obese and had his GED diploma proudly framed and hung in his office. I felt as comfortable as when I walked into my new internal medicine Doctor who greeted me with ‘Hey dude’.
Maybe no one squealed, I know in the city in California I lived in they would send inspectors out to cruise neighborhoods looking for non permitted work going on and also did aerial surveys every couple of years and do comparisons.
It isn’t very big at all but it is well constructed.
She can’t live long before it would have served its purpose and been torn down.
Sounds a lot like the old Soviet Union that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn described in the book The Gulag Archipelago. Central planning by any government kills freedom, even the freedom of children to take care of their parents.
There are right ways to do things and wrong ways to do them.
Seems like the city could of inspected the ramp and if it was out of code then force them to rip it out.
In criminal cases you are presumably innocent until proven guilty. When dealing with petty bureaucrats the opposite it true.
Even the inspectors bosses thought there was a better solution.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.