CM PRESS # 139

NO-PLANNING COMMISSIONER JIM RIGHEIMER KNOCKS THE BRADY BUNCH HOME
(Here's a photo of the actual home used for the exterior shots for the Brady Bunch TV series)


In his latest column in the Daily Pilot (5/12/07), new Costa Mesa resident and new no-Planning Commissioner Jim Righeimer writes that it is not a homeowner's responsibility to "protect a neighbor's view, sunlight or ocean breeze, or to make his or her house compatible with your 1972 'Brady Bunch' special."

In other words, if your neighbor wants to build a massive building next door to your home so that your home becomes a dark and dank dungeon fit only for a mushroom farm, it's okay with Righeimer.

Anyone with such a simplistic view of property rights shouldn't be on the no-Planning Commission.

The truth is that people on both sides of the property line have rights. When we buy homes, we don't just buy them for what's inside our property lines. We buy them for the neighborhood--for those things that exist outside our property lines.

And, we're usually especially interested in what buildings are right next to the one we are considering buying. A home is more than just shelter. When we buy a home, we buy a life style and we buy the right to the quiet enjoyment of our property without having it impacted by neighbors who selfishly disregard our rights and make it uncomfortable for us to continue living in our home.

When we buy a home in a neighborhood, we have a reasonable expectation that the character of the neighborhood will remain fairly constant, i.e. that it will remain more or less the way it was when we bought our home and that our quality of life won't be destroyed by those who make radical changes to the neighborhood.

Now, notwithstanding what we've just written above, we must also be allowed to improve our homes. We must be able to make them larger and more modern. But, as we do so, we must be respectful of the rights of others. Our changes must "fit" the neighborhood.

And, that's where the real battle lies: what fits and what doesn't fit a particular neighborhood?

A couple of years ago, the CM PRESS heard some people on the no-Planning Commission and on the City Council rail against the "mansionization" of Costa Mesa.

We argued against their position and in favor of mansions and even said that we could use some mansions in our city. Our position is still the same. We're all for bigger and more expensive homes to compete with the homes to our south that are stealing our upwardly mobile citizens away from Costa Mesa.

However, we are for balance, appropriateness, and respect for others and their rights. These are things that we think are missing in Righeimer's one dimensional view of property rights as expressed in his column.

If a homeowner has a small home that is outdated, we're all for letting him or her making it larger and more modern. In fact, we've argued for years that the City should encourage homeowners to make such changes. But, we also want to see those who do want to improve their homes respect their neighbors' reasonable expectations of not being adversely impacted by the changes.

The problem we have in Costa Mesa is that most of our home lots are very close to each other. We don't have large estates with empty land all around them. If we had the latter, we'd have no problem with someone building a massive home that blocks light and air on their own property, but in Costa Mesa that's not the case.


Here's the link to the Daily Pilot where you can find Righeimer's column: http://www.dailypilot.com/
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Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.

CM PRESS # 137

HEY, I OWN THIS LAND NEXT TO JIM RIGHEIMER'S HOUSE IN MESA VERDE AND THIS IS THE HOUSE DESIGN OF MY CHOICE. IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT, TOUGH!

Jim Righeimer has his second column in the Daily Pilot today, and in our view this one is every bit as bad as his first one and just gives more evidence that this guy shouldn't be on the no-Planning Commission. Here's the link: http://www.dailypilot.com/

We're starting to think that Righeimer didn't actually read any books about the things he writes about--conservatism, libertarianism, the Constitution, government, etc.-- and may have just glanced at the dust jackets.

How else can we explain the fact that in his latest outing in the Pilot, Righeimer starts off with a jingoistic chest puffing statement that our "inalienable rights--life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness...separate us from every other country in the world."

Sounds good. But don't wave that flag just yet. He's wrong. Peoples of many, many other nations have the same rights. That's not what separates us from some other countries.

In fact, these rights--these inalienable rights--which are also often called the natural rights of man have been around for a couple of thousand years in various nations. In more modern times, John Locke famously wrote about them in 1600's England. Today, they're enumerated in the constitutions of many nations including...are you ready? Russia.

The thing which really separates the U.S. from many other nations is not those words written by Thomas Jefferson that were quoted by Righeimer, but by the Bill of Rights and especially the First Amendment. But even these are being whittled away today. However, we'll save further comments on this for another column when we choose to wax philosophical.

Once Righeimer gets it wrong to begin with, he then seems to veer off even more into a selfish Randian world view where you can do anything you want with your property and to hell with your neighbors. After all, says Righeimer, "When we buy property, we own from the center of the earth and outward, including the land underneath, and the air above." Perhaps. But, Righeimer seems to get "sovereignty" and "property ownership" mixed up.

And, what about the rights of those who live next to your property? Don't your neighbors also have the same rights as you? Don't they have the right to pursue their happiness by not allowing you to put in a pig farm, or a 50' tall wall blocking light to their property, or by building a shack on your property?

Now, you may feel that a "shack" is a building type that makes you really happy because of the no nonsense functional simplicity of the design or just simply because you think shacks are beautiful or for whatever other reason you may have, so should you be able to build one next to Righeimer's home?

Apparently it's okay with Righeimer. If we correctly understand what he's written in his column, he seems to indicate that people shouldn't have a say in the design of their neighbor's home [or shack]. In his own words: "Is it your decision to say what's compatible in your neighborhood? Do you really think you have the right to tell them [your neighbors] how to build and design their home?" [Note: He got it backwards. Usually you design your home first, then you build it. Oh, never mind.]

If Righeimer had read a little further in the Declaration of Independence, which is where he got "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," he would have read "that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

In other words, governments are needed to make sure others don't take away your rights.

Even the most "do your own thing" municipal government, putting forth what most people would consider to be reasonable rules and regulations, will find that it has to take away some of your options as to what you can design or build on your property in order to keep you from negatively impacting your neighbors.

That loss of freedom is one of the prices we pay when we move into a city and choose not to live out in the middle of the desert or woods all by ourselves. Costa Mesa is not Walden Pond.

The real question in all this is just how intrusive should the government be? How much freedom in what we want to do with our real property are we willing to give up in order to live in a built-out city and reap the rewards of living there?

Many of us have selected Costa Mesa because we don't want to live in what we might call an overly manicured and antiseptic area like some cities to our south. We like a slightly quirky, even somewhat Bohemian city. At the same time, however, many of us don't want Costa Mesa to continue devolving into being a complete slum city. We're looking for a proper balance.

And, in our view, striking such a proper balance should be one of the goals of the Planning Commission; which the CM PRESS calls the "no-Planning Commission" because it so often seems to consider each and every item that comes before it as though it involves property that exists in a vacuum or is out in the middle of the desert with no other homes or businesses in sight.

Righeimer also worries, according to his column, that we might lose our inalienable rights to those who "think they have phony rights to a view, sunlight and compatible design."

Huh?

In the first place, people don't usually think they have "phony" rights. They usually think they have genuine rights. [Oh, never mind again.]

In the second place, does Righeimer actually believe that we're going to lose our rights to" life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," if we're not allowed to put in a pig farm, a 50' tall wall or a shack in a neighborhood full of nice homes?

Even Howard Roark would have known better.

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Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.