Englewood Story

Link: http://www.eyeonenglewood.com

On October 22, 2007, the head of Englewood’s building department, Lance Smith, phoned me to say that the City Attorney, Dan Brotzman, had instructed him to invalidate our building permit since our contractor was no longer working on the job.

I admitted we had fired our primary contractor for breaches of contract. I explained what a struggle it had been, but the work was already finished. We were just finishing some wood trim work.

He instructed me to come down to the building department and pull a new permit. He said his department would not honor the permit previously obtained by us because it was hung on a contractor’s license, but I could obtain a homeowner’s permit.

I immediately dropped what I was doing and obeyed.

On November 7, 2007, we received a call from Tricia Langon, Senior Planner, with Community Development. She called about "several complaints" that we had "unrelated people" living with us. I told her I had written a letter of inquiry to Gary Sears and was still awaiting a reply. She said she’d call back later because she was “in the dark as to how to proceed.” One month later, December 7, 2007, she knew exactly how to proceed.

Later, upon obtaining e-mails and phone messages from this time period, I realized that she had been sending threatening Notices to other households about violating the City's definition of household for years.

What she really meant about being “in the dark” was that Mr. Sears, with other heads of staff, had been colluding together about how to prosecute a legal private residence for a City code defining, “household.”

To make themselves legally immune for this nonsense was to promulgate a lie, say: "We made a mistake, and we are correcting it now." That is all well and good for someone who doesn't have everything to lose by that lie.

In my open records from the City, I found e-mails and phone calls from the neighbors and City employees about the 'Bartnick's guest house' and 'the boarding house.' This was before I even realized what term might characterize us and defined our rights.

When Ms. Langon called next, I explained that even six weeks later,I hadn’t yet received an answer from the City Manager. All I had asked for was information, and City Manager Sears did not have the decency to converse with me. Ms. Langon replied that City Manager Sears was now ready to meet with us. December 19th would be a convenient day to discuss our options.

The hold up had been that although our select neighbors and the City Manager had already determined to force us to leave the neighborhood, they required the appearance of order to do that. They needed to "get their ducks in order" regarding the household ordinance by which to prosecute us.

I called Joe Jefferson for help. He was our District 1 Council Representative newly elected, and he relayed that in his initial interview with City Manager, Gary Sears, he had confided that the City was going to prosecute us one way or the other, and that Mr. Sears was looking into our building permits to see if they could catch us in any kind of building violation too. Joe not only spoke to me on the phone about this, but also confirmed it in an e-mail.

I wasn’t worried about the building permits because we had passed everything except the final, and I knew we had been above average in our building standards. After all, this wasn’t a fix and flip, we had personally designed it for our family’s needs. We were living in it. We were vested.

Nevertheless, when we paid for researching records at the City, we found that Manager Sears had asked Police Officer Tom Vandermee for all of my blog entries to search for something that might trigger a case against us. He also asked Lance Smith for a professional opinion as to whether there were any differences in building codes for a boarding house or a single family residence.

Even the engineer had required exterior 2’x6’ walls to provide for lower heating costs. The framer had complained about our engineer designing in extra structural support around each window and doorway. “It’s gonna be a fortress,” he’d said rolling his eyes.

But it revolted me that Mr. Sears had just arranged to meet with us “about our options,” while official plans were under way to catch us in their net. This was my turning point. As I sat there on the phone listening to Joe Jefferson, I envisioned a web the City Manager had been quietly weaving. Nausea, angst set in.

That day, December 12, 2007, a certified letter came from the City.

I panicked at this roadblock. It clearly told how they were not willing to talk about options after all, but wanted to criminalize us. The NOTICE said, “You must comply with the City's definition of household within 7 days. The City does not have any permits or variances to give you. Home occupation permits are for business, something other than the nature of the primary function of your residence, thus they do not apply to you.”

My innocent attitude turned to dismay and a feeling of utter helplessness. How could we possibly move out our flourishing South Korean at this juncture? What about our artist who had just made her room her own with linens and decor? Where would our newest guest go who had lost his job just a week after moving in? It seemed inhumane to put any of our housemates out on the street in a Colorado Winter.

I felt sick. I e-mailed the City Manager and Ms. Langon to cancel our meeting as "unnecessary" since I knew from their 7-day Notice as well as Joe's conversation that they had already made up their minds how to proceed. We had their Notice in hand.

Joe shocked me further by reporting that they might even have a police officer standing by to serve us with a complaint depending upon what I said at the meeting.

In my e-mail, I showed my revulsion like the scream of a rape victim when I named Langon and Sears as the spiders weaving their web.

December 20, 2007 I desperately wrote a letter to each City Council member instead, asking each to research the code as to variances and zoning options, and I also asked them to over-rule the City Manager since we were not criminals, but privately shared our home with students.

No one on the City Council bothered to respond. Later, I discovered, that none of them could be bothered to research their own code or to care two twitters for a common homeowner such as myself.

On December 22, Christmas week, Officer Watson stuffed a "14-Day Notice of Violation of the Definition of Household" under the doormat: Ho~Ho! Our very own Christmas present from the City had arrived.

Link: http://EyeOnEnglewood.com

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!!!

Some people have asked the obvious question, "Can't you just hire an attorney?... If you are too poor, won't they provide you one?" So, here is our story.

In the new playing field, I stumbled around with legal arguments to the City's two new Complaints against both Bill and myself.

Although I had been a good little paralegal in a couple of law firms, I did not understand form, rules of evidence, rules of motion writing or how to reign in my own anger at the powerful treachery goings on under the official cloak of authority.

I regularly called on attorneys to see if they would handle our case. This attorney and that flatly stated that we could not pay their fees, that they only worked for cities or corporations with deep pockets and return business.

I called a local attorney who agreed that I had a case but announced that she worked as a part-time judge for the City and could not risk her employment, nor could she ethically represent me against them. She told me to call the Denver University law school. They would love this kind of challenge she assured me.

I wrote a letter, attaching the Complaint, and walked it across campus and up to the third floor of this regal looking law school building. The receptionist looked at me sympathetically and then said the professor handling this department was on maternity leave and would not be engaging with anyone new for quite some time.

Some attorneys were cryptically rude in letters of rejection. Another one spoke at length to me about having taken two cases like this before but having lost them.

I found precedent in my research that seemed to say that it was the duty of zoning departments to define the families and households in their districts, and that the court would uphold their intent. This precedent frightened me.

We applied for a legal aid attorney to no avail. Though our earnings were not at poverty level, the hourly rate attorneys were typically charging had doubled since my career in law offices. Old charts and definitions for deciding who qualified for legal assistance were outdated. They left a large hole for average homeowners like ourselves to tumble through.

In our case, what my husband made in a day equaled the price of travel time to court for young attorneys who just yesterday were practicing in mock court settings at law school! Perhaps I knew more than they did, but for sure, I was more zealous to defend our cause.

One attorney took thousands of dollars in retainer fees, then decided to settle without our approval because of his personal conflicts on the calendar. When we refused, he insulted us, threatened us by forecasting a total loss complete with a hundred thousand dollars in fines and jail. We panicked for a couple days and argued heatedly. In the end, we decided to stay our course of faith, loose our retainer to this unethical man, and not look back.

I read Psalm 37 in Eugene Peterson’s The Message. “Get insurance with God and do a good deed. Settle down and stick to your last. Keep company with God, get in on the best. Open up before God, keep nothing back; he’ll do whatever needs to be done; He’ll validate your life in the clear light of day and stamp you with approval at high noon.

“Bridle your anger, trash your wrath, cool your pipes—it only makes things worse. Before long the crooks will be bankrupt; God-investors will soon own the store.

“Bullies brandish their swords, pull back on their bows with a flourish. They’re out to beat up on the harmless, or mug that nice man out walking his dog. A banana peel lands them flat on their faces –-slapstick figures in a moral circus.

Meditating like this infused me with comfort, gentleness and hope. This version makes for a contemporary simile. Sometimes, I laugh and cry at the same time because things off limits for an American girl to say in her prayers, were stated in raw form in the poems of David the Shepherd and David the renegade leader. I could relate to this David.

But, how could I “bridle my anger?” This seemed too difficult for me much of the time. At times, I was filled with anger.

Every time I thought I was passed it, the reality of the prosecution, the weight of the city leaning on me, taking away the one thing I could give back to my husband and to God, slapped me in the face.

When I went out for a walk, our neighbor Anne would jump out of her front door and hold herself back from leaping at me. Her hatred was a force of energy hard to describe. They now had four video surveillance cameras on their property, one captured part of our house and our driveway.

I applied to a Christian Attorney’s network, but they only specialized in the hot topics of discrimination such as pro-life issues and church rights. Again, we were turned down.

A Land Rights League of attorneys brought our case to their board of directors, but in the end, their plates were already full.

The ACLU was fighting another defense case for business owners who had dared to improve the aging facades of their businesses, and against whom the City of Englewood had also filed suit. I saw in my research that they had defended a common law couple in Montana who had faced a similar violation of their city’s definition of household. I contacted them with our problem.

The ACLU rarely defends people who openly claim Christ. I guess they figure, “Let Christ defend his own.” At any rate, they were too busy to defend us.

“Stalwart walks in step with God; his path blazed by God, he’s happy. If he stumbles, he’s not down for long; God has a grip on his hand.” Psalm 37, The Message

We found a firm that wanted to take us on Pro Bono. We held our breath. But, because there were so many people involved as so called "witnesses" against us, there turned out to be a conflict of interest with someone in the firm being related to the Drakes.

They gave us hope about the merits of our case, but in the end were prevented from actually representing us.

Another firm again took us on, took our retainer, prepared to send out twelve subpoenas in our defense only to be informed that the City of Englewood had retained another partner in the firm on a gas station litigation matter, and they refused to allow this firm to put up the usual Chinese Curtain between the issues and partners.

This is a City's prerogative, to waive or not to waive their right, but in the case of the City of Englewood, they have so many irons in the fire, that all the firms who specialize in municipal issues are already retained and being employed in litigation matters. Think about all the tax money being spent on $200 - $350 per hour litigation!

There were seemingly no attorneys available to defend our cause. We were shut out from obtaining a legal defense, or forced to waive our rights to a speedy trial in order to find one.

Link: http://EyeOnEnglewood.com

When I designed the house and hired the contractor, it was with a contingency for a treehouse in the grand umbrella looking tree out back. I drew a few steps up from the deck out the back of that room and into an awaiting secret hideout in the tree.

Being a tomboy growing up, I was always intrigued with living in trees. My elder sister called me "monkey" and even tried to humiliate me by reporting my new fiancé that I used to make monkey sounds in front of the mirror. She underestimated the fortitude of Wild Bill with Shorts.

Wild Bill, or Bill with Shorts, didn’t come by those nick-names without reason. He was a man who walked to work in the Winter with his little black shorts on. He had some hot blood running through those veins. One of my favorite pictures is of him in his black shorts, black windbreaker, white socks and black sandals on a rocky volcanic mound on a stormy Vancouver coastline holding an umbrella. He looks like Christopher Robin to me somehow.

We were staying in a treehouse designed after the Canadian's Winnie the Poo stories, in a youth hostel, on Salt Spring Island that year for holiday.

On our 10th anniversary, I had bribed him to visit Africa with me by booking us in a tree house that hung over the fiery Zambezi River with crocodiles and hippos beneath, and the possibility of a green mamba snake coiled nearby.

Once, I had discovered an entire magazine of the finest treehouses in the world and dreamed for hours, days, months over it. How was it possible in America to live in a treehouse?

Well, one might buy a property with mature trees, for instance, and then design and build one from the regular house, so that one might have access to a real kitchen and a nearby potty. Yes. That’s it!

We built our home, but with the contractor fired, and my husband a nurse, not a builder of homes or even treehouses, I was a frustrated monkey to be sure.

But after our Seminary boys finished our decks for us (one was building the new Nordstroms downtown with his father who was the project manager there, and the other was an experienced framer from before Seminary days bringing in some of the bread and butter for his family because of the loss of his father who had died prematurely)... I saw that we were already IN the tree.

We no longer needed a treehouse, because the deck was embraced by the limbs of the tree. In short order, that room which was to be a den in the house became our bedroom.

Over the next two years, the wonder of our private getaway in the tree proved magical. The chatter of birds in the early morning woke us up with a childlike wonder plastered across our faces.

We pretended we lived in Africa. We pretended in the rainstorms, and on calm Saturday mornings.

We marveled at the turning of seasons in our tree. In Autumn, the transparent yellow with lemony sunshine radiating through,-- in Winter, the dramatic arching, twisting limbs of black and white, draped in snow, and in Springtime, the baby lime leaves sprouting. This room was my happiness, my secret joy.

On mornings when I had barely slept the night before because of sleepless problem solving with the various onslaughts of the neighbors and the City, I would wake up to the funny squirrels playing in the tree.

I could hear them overhead, running across the roof, see them leap into the tree, chase each other, defy each other, primp each other, hump each other, carry the small furry balls of their babies into safe hiding, and even calmly stared them down a mere two or three feet from eye to eye.

I would bring out rotting fruit as offerings to my entertaining jesters in this courtyard.

The dichotomy of our heavenly Father's loving kindness to us in the midst of our angst was a daily reprieve. In fact, we began to say, this was not the exception to our private hell, but it was rather our private heaven in which hell was attempting to overtake. That put things into perspective.

Once, during the first year of the onslaught, I attempted to propose an ordinance to the City as a remedy for the situation.

In my open records obtained from the City a short time later, I discovered how I was being mocked by the City Manager and City Attorney Brotzman. “What shall we call this ordinance?” One proposed. “Oh, that’s a no-brainer,” came the reply. “Our house is a very, very, very fine house… with two cats in the yard, life used to be so hard…” Brotzman had written.

Little did they know.