The City Council of Peachtree City will consider an astonishing agenda item for this Thursday night. The city wants to tell you what color you can and cannot paint your own home.
Here’s the pertinent part of the proposed ordinance that will apply to all residential zones inside the city limits and to all homes within those zones:
“Exterior colors shall be low reflectance, and subtle, earth-tone, or historical colors from a major paint manufacturer’s historical palette. Bright high-intensity colors, bright metallic colors, or fluorescent colors shall not be used. Material or color changes generally should occur at a change of plane; painted patterns and frequent changes in material and/or color selections shall be avoided. Building colors should be carefully chosen so that each building color complements that of its neighbors.”
Aside from the questionable and totally subjective value judgments imposed on its citizens by a local government (what’s wrong with glossy paint?), this proposed use of the police power of the city government to say yes or no to whatever color you are allowed to use on your own home — everywhere in the city — moves from the realm of legitimate governing into flat-out meddling.
Apparently, Peachtree City officials aspire to become the Supreme Court of homeowners associations.
Homeowners already have enough intrusion into their lives and property without the super-nanny city government poking its paint inspectors into every subdivision nook and cranny.
If this becomes a rule, what happens to the homeowner whose house color runs afoul of the city’s color censors and exterior decorators? Will you get a ticket for bad taste and be hauled off to city court to face fines and jail time for your home’s failure to be the right color? Will you be forced upon pain of imprisonment by the color police to re-paint your home?
This bad idea is off the color scale in city government overreach. Paint this misbegotten ordinance putrid green and dispose of it, mercifully.
We think more than a few Peachtree City residents might agree that city bureaucrats should leave the exterior decorating issues to individual homeowners and their own homeowners associations. Many would say to the City Council: “Color my house color none of the city’s business.”
City Council members, you have a myriad of more pressing issues facing you than imposing by force of law your personal notions of color correctness onto the entire city.
