Sprinklers Reloaded

First, good news: We got approval today on refinancing our house in Los Angeles, so we now have enough funds to cover us through...September. Maybe October.

Second, I opened Pandora's box on the sprinkler appeal. When I was there over the July 4th weekend, we met with a consultant (read, building code enforcer for another county) to plan our appeal of the sprinklers. One of his suggestions was to see if we could get support from county and state officials. Now, in LA we have 9 county commissioners representing 13 million people, so I'm not exactly on a first-name basis with any of them. I sent letters to various officials and didn't expect to hear a word back.

Well, so far I received a personal call from State Representative Roy Baldwin and been contacted by the staff of Senator Arlen Specter, Representative Joe Pitts, State Senator Noah Wenger, State Representative Tom Creighton, and County Commissioner Pete Schaub. Commissioner Schaub was particularly interested and put several county resources on task for "resolving" the issue as soon as possible. That's wonderful, except...our hearing is next Thursday. So in the unlikely event that we can get the state historic preservation office, the county planning commission, the building inspector, the township, and the Dept of Labor & Industry together in one room before next Thursday, we might avoid the appeal altogether.

However, in the likely event that we can't get everyone together, then we'll probably just end up annoying everyone, and Dawn will have to deal with a hostile appeals board on Thursday.

Needless to say, Dawn has forbidden me from any further participation in this project.

The front door as required by the building code.