[Editor’s note: The City Council of Peachtree City voted 5-to-0 last week against adopting the ordinance that would have set house color standards.]
About the time I think that I’m going to have nothing to write about, along comes the government to bail me out.
In Peachtree City, the City Council was debating whether you, as a homeowner, have the taste, intelligence, and right to decide on the color of your own home. Yes, there are people who probably do not have the taste and intelligence to decide issues about their own dwelling, but those are surely few and far between.
Anyone who takes a drive around Peachtree City can quite easily see that the desire for a nice looking home, to blend in with the neighborhood, and to keep their property values up influence the vast and overwhelming majority of homeowners. Peachtree City is a nice place to live. So far, the residents have done just fine, thank you, without the big brothers and sisters of an intrusive government telling them what color their house is allowed to be.
All that, however, may be about to change as City Council considers a new ordinance that states which colors, to be determined, no doubt by said government, will be permitted. Some exemptions will be allowed on unique buildings, whatever that term means, but, basically, the city is saying, if this ordinance is approved, that you, the homeowner, are too stupid to decide the color on your own house, the most expensive item you are likely ever to own.
One would think that elected or appointed officials would learn that citizens are sick and tired of government autocrats encroaching into every tiny area of their life. And it never seems to stop.
I suppose it is in the nature of some people to impose rules on the rest of us just because they can. But, thank you very much, I am smart enough to know that if I paint my house a funky color the neighbors will hate me and the prospective buyers will pass me by. I don’t need nor do I desire some code enforcer to come and tell me what I can and can’t do with the property it takes me 30 years to purchase.
It wasn’t all that long ago that a local jurisdiction sought to tell the homeowners exactly what kind of mailbox they could have. Later, the subject was whether or not a homeowner was bright enough to know when a tree should be removed or replaced.
In Peachtree City, there sits a gigantic hole in the ground that used to be a beautiful lake. Should not that garner some attention? Surely the tasteful and intelligent government officials can figure this one out before they become helicopter parents to the city’s adult population.
I hit a pretty good pothole the other day. Isn’t that part of the local government’s responsibility?
A friend in a southern California city encountered a new regulation that ordered that solar powered lawn lights be no more that 18 inches off the ground. In a rebellious mood, he went outside and raised all his lawn lights to 18 and one-quarter inches.
He reported that the Apocalypse did not occur and that California did not slide into the ocean. However some government official probably lost sleep because somewhere out there lawn lights were a quarter inch out of compliance.
I get that a city needs some rules. One doesn’t want a hog farm in the middle of a residential neighborhood. It seems to me that this is a solution in search of a problem. If there were hundreds, even tens, of houses that were hot pink, or Tennessee orange, or some color that glowed in the dark, I could see the point. This, I think, is just one more example of government overreach and an indicator of an elitist mentality.
Stop it. Please, just stop with the micromanagement. You are elected or hired to assist the citizenry … not to add to the regulation burden. Enough already! Stop it.
[David Epps is the pastor of the Cathedral of Christ the King, Sharpsburg, GA between Newnan and Peachtree City (www.ctkcec.org). He is the bishop of the Charismatic Episcopal Diocese of the Mid-South which consists of Georgia and Tennessee (www.midsouthdiocese.org) and the Associate Endorser for the Department of the Armed Forces, U. S. Military Chaplains, ICCEC. He may contacted at [email protected].]
