On May 9, 2011, Walter went to the city to file for our permit. We assumed it would take about a month to hear back regarding our plans. We do hear back from the city by the end of the month. 25 pages of comments with nothing too bad regarding the general plans, EXCEPT...... for the additional public works requirements because the back of our property abuts along two creeks.
Our two creeks, which we love...... we love the privacy (no one is going to build back there), we love the sound of the running water which is only during the rainy season. They are totally dry in the summer, and then finally the sound of the frogs in the spring/early summer. The frogs literally sing us to sleep. All these reasons and more are why we find ourselves doing a "remodel" instead of just selling and buying something new.
OK... back to the creeks, Regnart is the smaller creek which runs along our back yard and flows into the Calabasas creek which is a decent size creek, but only covers a small portion of our yard.
It turns out that the city is going to require us to have a surveror provide a report which shows the flood plane levels in accordance with FEMA calculations. Even though we are in a greater than 100 year flood zone and have never been required to buy flood insurance.
The second thing we are required to do is to have a soil study done to determine the density of the soil for purposes of the addition of square footage we are doing as well as a determination of the risk of liquefaction in the event of earthquake, which seems crazy to us, but what can you do? When the city says you need to do something; you gotta do it. It added 6 weeks to the time line of our project as well as $7K in incremental cost..... for what? That is my question. The bureaucratic BS is only just beginning and I figure I just better get used to it.
We will see what it all leads to.
No comments:
Post a Comment