Fair, Appropriate & Too Expensive

The weekend wouldn't be the weekend without the editorial board of Tulsa World running a marketing piece (THEY refer to them as opinion pieces) for the recall effort. Today, they took another vacuous run at District 6 city councilor Jim Mautino.

Concerned that change that they didn't initiate might actually occur in our city, the board is actually making the case that the citizens of Tulsa have a fitting appeal option when they feel they have gotten a raw deal from the Tulsa Board of Adjustment. In fact, their exact quote is that "Citizens who are unhappy with Board of Adjustment decisions have a fair and appropriate appeals mechanism available now..."

"Appeals mechanism" is a very pleasant and succinct way to say, "hire an expensive attorney, take out a second mortgage, or if you're lucky get the neighborhood to have a big yard sale and silent auction so that you can cough up the $10,000 to $20,000 it takes to prevent $10,000 to $20,000 of impact to your property value."

That is, unless you're already a real estate lawyer, developer, editorial writer or pompous publisher who can help keep the members of the Board of Adjustment in their quasi-judicial roles. Then, you can expect to be able to keep that battery recycling facility out of that vacant "green space" contiguous to your guest house.

I'm not convinced Jim Mautino is on the right track with his suggested change to the appeals process for the Board of Adjustment. However, to minimize the impact of BOA decisions on areas on Tulsa other than Mid-Town or South Tulsa is callous at best. To call Mautino's suggestion a "solution in search of a problem," is to confirm that the opinion fakers of The World wouldn't know a land use problem if it was built abutting their back yard with an improper setback which could cause a substantial detriment to the public good which impairs
the purposes, spirit, and intent of the Code, or the Comprehensive Plan.

But take heart...there is an appropriate mechanism for a better editorial policy. It's called The Tulsa Beacon.