Good Start to the Week

I got a pleasant surprise this morning when I walked out the door, something that has been a bit rare lately. Not that my life is terrible or anything, but things are pretty tight financially and there are a number of things that I want to do with the yard/property to spruce things up. The ones that just involve a little toil, I am doing. The ones that are going to cost some coin are stressing me a bit. A little background first.

Since my great personal and professional crash of 2005, something I haven't really shared much about here, I've been slowly trying to get back to the type of life I want and the kind of person I want to be. It has not been a smooth process; steps forward, steps backwards, and sometimes no steps at all. I've thought about what happened and had looked at it all as a "meltdown", but I think now that what Sheila describes in one of her posts as a "swerve" is more accurate:

There are many facets to life, and the point seems to be (to me) to figure out how to not recoil in ALL areas of your life, just because you have experienced a disappointment in ONE area. My friend David made me see, yesterday, that that is, in essence, what my script is about. Sometimes in life, we over-correct ourselves, after a bad rejection, professionally or personally. We take a huge swerve in the other direction and then have to go about undoing all the damage done by that swerve.

Yeah, I swerved. One of the things I recoiled from was taking care of the yard and property. I did enough to keep the city off my butt, but that was about it. The last couple of years I've been plugging away at things and I'm now at the point where I need to do stuff like redo the front steps/sidewalk. The steps at the front door are sagging away from the house and the step by the city sidewalk got wrecked by the city sidewalk plow, again, this year. The walk between the two is also starting to crack and slant and looks like crap. All in all, not good.

I had called the city earlier this year about their snowplow damaging my step and their response at the time was that the city has at least a 3" easement from the sidewalk and that since the step abutted the sidewalk, it was probably out of code. If that was the case, they would most likely hit me with a fix-it ticket, maybe to include the front walk since they would see that. Then I would have 30 days to get it all fixed, this time giving the city their easement. That meant tearing out the existing walk and fixing everything on my own dime. Not a disaster by any means, but cash is tough right now. One thing the city guy did say was that they would be redoing my street and sidewalks this summer and maybe he could talk to the project engineer about cutting me a deal, since they would be pouring concrete anyway. I said fair enough, but if the answer was no I didn't want someone hitting me with a fix-it ticket. I never heard back from the guy and just assumed the answer was no.

So anyway, I walked out the door this morning and a city employee was marking up not just the city sidewalk along the street, but my own front walk as well. We got to talking and it turns out that not only are they going to redo the step in front for me, they will do about 16' of my front walk, "to do it right". Hot dang.

But wait, it gets better. Since they are redoing the grade of the street and the sidewalk a little they will have to redo my driveway opening at the curb. The current driveway has a fairly steep angle to it, if it hits it too fast a small car could scrape its bumper. The city employee didn't like that. He figures he needs to regrade about 15' of my driveway to do that right, so they will pour new concrete for that too. It would leave me with a part concrete/part asphalt driveway, but is that a big deal?

And...The street reconstruction and the 180' of city sidewalk along my lot that will be replaced as part of the project? It's a state aid project for certain city arteries, I can't remember the term he used. Total property assessments for me: $0.

I'm going to talk to the contractor to see how much he would charge to do the remaining front walk and steps, since they will be there for the city work anyway. I don't really want to spend the money on that right now either, but if it's a good enough deal it makes sense.

God, that would be one more big thing off my plate. A good win.

more: After savoring this a little more, I think it's a good example of how treating people decently, even if I think I'm entitled to assume an angry and aggrieved pose, is better in the long run. Reaming on people is not my style, but in this case I had thought about it as a tactic to use to get something done. Aside from being generally wrong, here that would have been a huge mistake I think. It's not like I need a lot of reinforcement in this area, but it's a good reminder to first give people a chance.

Comments

[Rob]

Yes, indeed. Like found money. Contractors working for the city/state/parish/county are usually pretty good about that sort of thing. I've had similar experiences at my house, particularly with the road crews. Hope you can get the rest done, too.

[Dave E.]

Yep. The project is going to be about a two month hassle, but I've lived here 19 years without a single street or sidewalk assessment. This makes it likely I never will see one, here at least. And the city being nice about the step and walk makes it that much better.

[Mr. Bingley]

Maybe there is hope for the People's Republic of Minnesota!

[Dave E.]

Mr. B.-I don't know if I could have had the same discussion with a Minneapolis employee. I could be wrong, but I think the bureaucracy is too big there. I probably would have been brushed off and referred to an endless loop of people whose main goal would have been to palm me off to someone else.