Skip to main content

Road Rage?

Yesterday my neighbor posted the following on Facebook:

SHA ( State Highway Admin) has set up an office in one of the town homes in my neighborhood. How do I know? Because they inconveniently put a sign up in my yard showing where the office is located. So I (inconveniently) moved it since no one knocked at my door to ask. I moved their sign to a more appropriate location by the mail box where it's more visible from the road but I have no clue WHY they are set up in a residential location!

I responded:

That is against the rules of our HOA and the OMCA RAC. I am puzzled.


She then posted a photo:

 

Later on:

I just spoke with the GENTLEMEN that put the sign up in my yard. He says that they got the house through a Realtor's office & they WILL be operating out of this RESIDENTIAL location. He also asked who moved the sign to which I told him I did & it would have been neighborly if he had asked prior to putting it up.


Hmm...Oakland Mills and, for that matter, Columbia as a whole, has strict rules about what is permissible in a residential area. So does my HOA, Cinnamon Tree at Talbott Springs. Another neighbor, a veteran of multiple stints overseas in the Middle East, was cited for storing his motorcycle directly in front of his house--even though the front of his house faces backward and isn't visible to the street!


We run a tight ship over here. So: the State Highway Administration?


I turned to Twitter:


@macsmom: Why has @MDSHA put a business office in residential neighborhood #OaklandMills? HOA rules forbid this. Perplexed.http://t.co/LzLZeBFk4G

@MDSHA: @macsmom acknowledging your tweet. Looking Into the situation. Will get back to you- likely tomorrow. Thank you. -jp

@macsmom: @MDSHA Thank you so much for your prompt response. Really appreciate it.


I have notified the president of my HOA, and the OMCA staff member in charge of RAC decisions. At this point, I am perplexed. My neighbor, understandably, is upset. She now lives directly next door to the State Highway Administration. So, we'll see what happens today. In the meantime, I thought this comment from a Facebook friend was pretty funny:


They can put it next door to me, IF it means my road gets cleared faster this winter.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Teacher Gifts

Today is the last day of school before the Winter Break. It’s a good time to remember the far-reaching nature of our public school system. You may not have children. You may have sent your children to independent schools. It matters not. You will be impacted one way or another. Yesterday I read a long thread on Facebook about several waves of illness in the schools right now. There’s influenza A and norovirus, I believe. And of course there’s COVID. Apparently in some individual schools the rate of illness is high enough for school admin to notify parents.  When I was little the acceptable holiday gift for a teacher was one of those lovely floral handkerchief squares. (I don’t know what it was for male teachers. They were rare in my elementary years.) These days the range of teacher gifts is wider and I have fond memories of Target gift cards which I have written about before. I think it’s safe to say that giving one’s teacher Influenza, norovirus, or COVID is not the ideal holiday...

F ³: We Are Not Entitled

  A college student went missing. His family and friends were distraught. The community was encouraged to be on the lookout and spread the word.  Days passed.  They must have been agonizing days for those who cared about the missing student. Thoughts that foul play had been involved cannot have been far from their thoughts.  Then, at last, the student was found. Alive. The news was shared with the public.  So. Much. Relief. A family had been reunited with their child. Even though we know that life is complicated, I think it is okay to accept this as a happy ending and leave it at that.  But the world of social media says no. For every expression of joy at the news came questions and even judgement. It became clear to me that some folks felt entitled to an explanation. They wanted the backstory. It’s as though they felt that, by enlisting the help of the public on social media, the authorities now owed them all the details. Television dramas often weave curr...

Separate and Unequal

  Remember “Separate but equal”? Remember how that really meant that Black schools languished in  broken-down buildings without adequate heat or toilet facilities, with cast-off, ragged learning materials, underfunded and largely ignored? The Supreme Court struck that down in 1954. The evidence was clear that separate was not equal. Plessy v Ferguson had led to - - no, endorsed - - deeply unequal schooling and opportunities. We tend to think of Brown v Board as being purely about racial integration. It was not.  It was about the logical consequences of segregation. And they were not, not, not equal. The ruling in 1954 didn’t transform public education for non-whites into a land of milk and honey by any means. But it articulated some essential truths in a way that made including everyone a legal precedent which could be relied upon and built upon. It was better than what came before it but it rested upon unsteady ground. It did not necessarily change the hearts or minds ...