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The Tree-House is Gone

February 17, 2011

Hi Readers. Yup. The one we nsrhrzasrs
discussed a couple posts ago has been dismantled. Here’s the story. It was too dangerous, the local council deemed.

Personally, I liked one commenter’s idea that the folks who voted against it should have been required to spend an afternoon in it first. But I guess that didn’t happen. Sigh. –L.

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16 Responses to The Tree-House is Gone

  1. Staceyjw aka escaped to mexico February 17, 2011 at 11:18 am #

    I dread moving back to the paranoid USA. how did we get so CRAZY?

  2. BPFH February 17, 2011 at 11:28 am #

    Oh, that’s easy. We’re TOO safe. Because of that, when Americans go looking to reduce risk, they go looking to reduce risk that is increasingly already minimal. (But hey… who wouldn’t want to reduce risk? What are you, some sort of Commie? 🙂 )

  3. Robin February 17, 2011 at 12:03 pm #

    What bothers me most about this is the Councilwoman’s quote. She said she had no choice. Her hands were tied. Why? Someone had to initiate the original rules, why couldn’t they get changed? So once we have a rule written we can never go back? That’s insane.

  4. Bob Davis February 17, 2011 at 12:32 pm #

    It’s not that they CAN’T change the rules, it’s just that it would be “too much like work” or it would “step on the toes” of someone with “clout.” One has to distinguish between “real reasons” and “acceptable excuses”. Last month we had a big uproar here in the San Gabriel Valley (near L.A.) when some county bureaucrats ordered the destruction of a grove of old oaks trees. The reason given was that the land was needed to provide room for rocks and dirt cleaned out of a “debris basin” that catches runoff from our mountains. Just about everyone in the area was aghast when these venerable trees were chainsawed, but the county controls the land where the were, and officials claimed that it would have “cost too much” to use an alternate location. More likely it would have taken a bit more money and a lot more planning effort to save the trees.

  5. North of 49 February 17, 2011 at 1:57 pm #

    Obviously those council members have never been kids.

  6. North of 49 February 17, 2011 at 2:04 pm #

    @Robin – I bet her hands were tied by the council’s lawyers who have said that the little tree house was a multimillion dollar lawsuit waiting to happen.

  7. Swain February 17, 2011 at 9:59 pm #

    Tragic. Stupid and tragic.

  8. Jen February 17, 2011 at 11:04 pm #

    So, because of ONE complaint (according to the original article) this treehouse is now gone. If I lived in that neighborhood, I would find out who made that complaint and picket outside their house until they provided an alternate place for my children to play.

  9. Robin February 17, 2011 at 11:18 pm #

    Jen – it would be more fun to sic someone on them regarding some code violation or other beaurocratic nightmare.

    North of 49 – agreed. But the idea that nothing can ever be done is just wrong.

  10. North of 49 February 17, 2011 at 11:34 pm #

    @Robin : “hands are tied” is bureaucrat speak for either “the lawyer says the lawsuit would bankrupt us” or “I’ve already made up my mind and you can never change it no matter what you do.” Like I said, they were probably never kids.

  11. Cheryl W February 18, 2011 at 12:08 am #

    I predict that the kids will still climb the tree. And I predict that eventually, some kid will fall out of the tree and scrap a knee.

  12. Cheryl W February 18, 2011 at 12:56 am #

    That should read “scrape a leg.” I doubt they will want to scrap it.

  13. EricS February 18, 2011 at 1:05 am #

    @ Bob Davis: politics. They only benefit the people conducting them. It’s a classic case of “we can’t be bothered with a tree house, get an inspection team out there and report back”. And it doesn’t matter what it is, they just need to show they did due diligence. But without ever actually seeing for themselves, they put trust and merit on a group of people who quite possibly has a bias view. So if the inspectors never like the tree house and has been looking for an excuse to take it down, or that their sense of “safety” is that of helicopter parents, then the tree house never had a fighting chance.

    Paranoid, holier than thou, ignorant officials – 1
    Happy (or used to be happy), our future, impressionable children – 0

    It’s like taking candy from a baby, and not in the meaning of being easy, but rather being mean spirited.

    I say find another tree on private property, that the owner doesn’t mind having another tree house built on it. The put a sign up that says “NO INSPECTORS ALLOWED”.

  14. Swain February 18, 2011 at 2:10 am #

    Jen, I bet it was one parent who complained about Valentine’s Day at that school in Maryland…

  15. steve February 18, 2011 at 2:23 am #

    Here’s the Waverley Council’s webpage:

    http://bit.ly/eFtlX1

    North Bondi, New South Wales, Australia
    Email: waver@waverley.nsw.gov.au

    Maybe we should write them and suggest they read Lenore’s blog.

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