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Ah, city government, is there anything they can’t screw up?
So there’s this guy who lives in Brighton, a little section on the outskirts of Boston-proper. On the outside of his house there’s this spiral metal staircase that’s kinda’ old and rickety. So since the man is a contractor, he decided to fix it up. Trouble his, his neighbors were pissed off at the construction noise, so they got the city to hit him with a stop-work order because he had not obtained the proper permits. So he does what any reasonable citizen in such a situation would do, and he applies for said proper permits. And the city denies his application.
Fast forward to this week, where a man climbed the stairs at two o’clock in the morning, trying to break into the house. When the burglar tried to kick in a door from the stairs, the stairs gave out and the man died. And now the city is saying that the homeowner will be cited for having the “unsafe and dangerous” stairs on his property!
Are you f’ing kidding me? The city stopped him from fixing the stairs, didn’t give him the permits to fix the stairs, and is now going to cite him because a trespassing burglar died on the stairs he wanted to fix in the first place? That, ladies and gentlemen, is the kind of amazement that only local politics can bring to you.
Oh, and as Bostonist correctly asks, “who wants to guess how long before the dead man’s family sues?”
Comments
Great post as always! It's these kind of stories that really irk me. The kind of stories where burglars get injured while breaking in and sue and the ineptitude of government. If I were that guy, I'd probably try to sue his local gov't.
Posted by Barb | August 22, 2006 10:32 AM
Check the Bostonist link again; they've since updated and taken some of the punch out of the story. It turns out that the contractor may have actually installed the unsafe staircase as part of the oroginal construction work that he did without a permit, and the guy who died may not have been a burglar but jus a drunken vagrant.
Posted by phinn | August 23, 2006 5:27 PM
Of course that should read "original construction work" and "just a drunken vagrant". That'll teach me to hit the preview button before I post :p
Posted by phinn | August 23, 2006 5:32 PM