By Rachel Carlson, LMC Staff Attorney
Codification may not be the most fascinating specialization in the legal field – most family gatherings and parties make me poignantly aware of this fact. I usually manage only a few sentences about an “interesting” issue with my work, before someone turns to my volunteer firefighter husband and asks him to please recount his most recent life saving adventure.
It’s hard for city ordinances to compete with cliff-side rescues in terms of real world excitement, but I admit I’m hooked. I have a secret treasure trove on my computer of ordinances that I simply like and I have spent hours collecting examples of thrillingly terrific definitions for city codes. I’m hooked for reasons that surprisingly dovetail with my husband’s search and rescue operations.
When I was a very young attorney, my first boss in the legal field asked me to draft a new zoning district for him that would encompass headquarters for research and development type operations. He gave me the current city zoning code as a model. I soon noticed that there was one oddly common feature between the many diverse districts – from R-1, to Ag, to Limited Industrial. My boss, the long-time city attorney, had prohibited buildings over three stories in height in every single district. Well this was curious! I admit my client was a smaller city, and the chance of a high-rise development going in tomorrow was next to zero. But still – why this seemingly irrational dislike for tall buildings. Ten stories may look out of place, but why not four or even five?
Into his office I wandered, holding the code book in my hand and a polite, puzzled frown on my face. I still remember his office vividly, from the books on the shelf to the desk that featured two teetering towers of papers at each of his elbows. As I asked him my question, he leaned across his desk and the papers wobbled dangerously. “The fire truck,” he answered. I frowned with a little more polite puzzlement. The papers wobbled some more. “The fire truck ladder only reaches up three stories,” he explained patiently, already turning back to his work. “And the next truck that reaches higher is 45 minutes away. If we let someone build a building over three stories in town, it will put residents and our fire department volunteers in danger.”
Oh. The fire trucks. I had never before made the connection between building height and resident safety. Or between drafting a simple ordinance well and preserving the public welfare – words city attorneys may throw around a lot, but not really think about in concrete terms. I’ve never forgotten that brief encounter that hammered home for me the real connections between city ordinances and creating a safe and liveable community. And so I’m hooked on this rather odd specialization of codification.
This blog is intended to share some of the things I’ve learned and some of the things I’m still thinking about related to city codes and ordinances. I hope you find some useful things here as we progress together.
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