Columbians should heed your headline “Beware! Big Brother Is Watching” regarding the City of Columbia’s sweeps throughout the city to nab those property owners violating property maintenance codes as well as structural ones in order to enhance the quality of life of its citizens. Such an indulgence in vagueness suggests that the city, county, and state can make demands on property owners that border on the irrelevant as well as absurd. More seriously, such opaqueness flies in the face of property rights as commonly understood. To counteract such imprecision, it would behoove putative violators to read the 2003 International Property Maintenance Code after being cited for a violation. For example, The Code as written sets a standard that is almost impossible to achieve or adhere to as it ignores local conditions, such as climate, which has an enormous impact on buildings, flora, etc. However the creators of this code understood that their standards have to meet a rather harsh test in that violations of them should impact the health, safety, and welfare of the public and not just serve as a means to impose artificial or cosmetic whims on property owners.

Putative violators should check inspection methodology before caving into citations and, generally speaking, citizens should demand that the city advertise the methodology employed. Often inspectors, in response to neighbors’ complaints, fabricate reasons for citations suggesting, for example, that a house with chipping paint attracts the unsavory, the homeless, etc. meaning that other governmental entities are incapable of handling such problems and find it politically expedient to shift blame to property owners. If painting houses were to solve the contraband business and homelessness, most heavily taxed citizens would be overjoyed with such an inexpensive answer.

Big Brother triumphs because his/their target remains ignorant by choice.

(Mrs.) Jennifer B. Gardner