Or am I over reacting? We live in a little “Village” surrounded by the city of Louisville, KY. It is a strange political situation where we have our own town council, garbage & recycle contracts, and a mini police force (part time retired officers). But Louisville provides fire, sewer, more police, and we much obey all Louisville metro laws.
The area is largely white working and middle class. Largely home owners with some rentals. And most neighbors know each other by sight (maybe, but more likely by car or dog if they walk it). There are not a lot of neighbors socializing with each other.
One of my neighbors gets real upset when people park in easement areas and calls the police regularly. Now, it is illegal in all of Louisville but not enforced in lower income areas. But because of his calls our Village police check out our block somewhat regularly and I joke with visitors to not let their tires touch one blade of grass if they park on the steet.
Jump across the orange easement and I’ll get back to the incident that got riled up.
I was looking out our front window the other evening and noticed something like six cars parked on our block. That is very unusual as most park in their driveways - we are one of the few house to actually use our garage for our cars. Often there are no cars parked on our block.
I then noticed that our Village police chief was parked in our driveway wring a ticket for the car parked in front of our house. We don’t have the traditional golf course turf grass yard, it is all flowers and native plants. That is another story - as you can imagine our Village board once tried to make us cut it all down.
The point is I could not see if the car was actually on our easement. I could see the two cars in front of that one were in parked about 8 inches into my neighbor’s easement. After, the chief left I went out to see how much into the easement the car was parked. Yes, half the tire was off the asphalt on the easement - basically the 3 to 4 inches of rocky dirt where no plants grow.
Now I’m thinking that is a bit picky but... Then I thought, I had not seen the chief put tickets so I decided to check the windshields of those cars. To my surprise they had not been ticketed. Walking back toward my driveway, I noticed a car down the other direction with its front right wheel obviously in the easement and it had no ticket.
As I looked over the four cars all were relatively new - nothing beat up or out of the ordinary. But then one difference jumped out. The ticketed car had several pro Obama bumper stickers.
Now I’m getting a little pissed off. I emailed my major. He forward it to the police. The police story was that they gave 3 tickets that day and the others must have taken their ticket off the car. That was obviously not what happened but I wasn’t sure what to do next.
So the next day I called the chief, told him what the mayor told me, and offered my apology if I had jumped the gun. I asked for a description of the other cars and where they were ticketed. He read me information from the tickets - type and color of car, time it was ticketed, and address of house it was parked in front of. Only the car with the Obama stickers matched my photos. Did I mention I got photos of all the cars and how much they were on the easement?
After telling the Chief about my photos, he changed his story. Said he must have just missed the other cars. Told me he was a long time Democrat. Told me that a couple of times but never said he voted for or liked Obama. Many while Kentucky Democrats did not an vote for and do not support Obama.
The monthly council meeting is Monday evening. Should I go and bring up this issue? Or should I just let it drop?
Thanks for reading my rant and any suggestions you might have.