Welcome to Slumlord Enterprises LLC

Zoning is one of the most boring discussion topics imaginable. Unless you are a Zoner. But I could be wrong. I know a few zoning officers. They like to drink. They are not popular with the public. They have strange ideas, facial ticks, and steal your dollars for Cash-5 lottery. I doubt they ever buy your ticket. How do you think they make their car payments?

Zoners can't be trusted, they always say no, always tell you where you can put that shed, where you can stick that garage, and that fence. They are the crushers of beauty salon dreams and fracturers of home catering fantasies. Zoning Officers are the third person to show up when your window shatters. The first person is the kid who threw the rock, the second person is the police officer you called for, and the third person is the Zoning Officer handing you the violation notice for a broken window. You have thirty (30) days to fix that, Mr. Public.

Zoning is a learned discipline, like yoga. In yoga, cute chicks bend themselves into strange and erotic positions. In zoning, the officer's mind is bent into strange positions by Joe Citizen, Sammy Slumlord, and Tammy Tenant. In yoga, it takes years of self-discipline to learn the most difficult of positions and hold them in perfect stillness. In zoning, it takes years of self-discipline to keep from kicking the town busybody down the steps of the Borough hall and over the hood of her 1976 Plymouth Valiant.

I have searched the web and my soul, and a few sleazy tattoo parlours downtown. There are no zoning blogs, code enforcement codas, or mad, rambling babble-thoughts from Zoners any where in the world. Oh, the dry sherry of zoning is available for your reading pleasure: zoning law reviews; code enforcement updates; half-ton volumes of regulations; seminars and more seminars. I can't wait to attend my next seminar. PowerPoint was never so exhausting, so excruciatingly banal, so wonderfully benign. No wonder zoning officers often have that look of the zombies in Dawn of the Dead. We either think we have died and this is our hell or you should die and join us here.

Yet....every day is different, with unusual people walking through the town hall doors. This blog is about those people, about the problems we Zoners face, the family feuds and rivalries, the small town politics, the setback of one foot short, the determination to improve our neighborhoods, and the spirit of humanity that flows through the office, down the street, and around the block. The river of the human condition. I love its wet touch and hate its drowning currents. Zoning is about dreaming, reality, discovery, and loss. It is a fascinating tale I want to share with you. That is what this blog is all about: sharing the experience, the blessing, and the curse. There are stories to be told here.