The City of Phoenix Neighborhood Services Division; Planning and Zoning; Waste

The City of Phoenix.  A circus unto itself.  If they tell you they are going to do something, I give it, at this point, about an 80% chance that what they say they are going to do? Will NEVER happen.

Case in point (and I have several of recent versions, not to mention instances from the past) is my discussion with a "manager" in the Zoning division last week.  We had a long conversation about the property in question.  Namely, the 2 structures built on the property that could never pass a city inspector's inspection and the extension cord they are using to provide those structures power from the next property over.

The conclusion of the discussion is that she was going to send someone out to inspect the property and that she would call me back after that inspection was done.

Of course, neither ever occurred, as I just got off the phone with a person at the City that states there is nothing in their system about it and that he knew nothing about it - which this particular individual is in the position to have received this information from this lady that I spoke with since that is his venue.

I got shuffled around for quite a while before I finally got to this guy, btw.  I am not letting up on this, whatever can be done about the property legally, that's what I am intent on getting done.  It's a hoarder's dream and a normal, neighboring property owner's nightmare.  So, this is the determination: if those structures are under 200 feet, there is nothing they can do about it.  Okay.  I dunno how many square feet they are, but I doubt they are 200 square feet.

HOWEVER.  The extension cord running power from their other property to that one?  Illegal.  I know for a FACT there is no power ON that property.  SRP was going to turn the power on until they saw the pedestal and declared that that pedestal would have to be replaced before they turn the power on.  I know this because SRP has to come into my back yard to do such.  SRP told me this.  The pedestal was never replaced, hence, the power never turned on. Yet, there is a stereo blaring loudly over there - well it isn't any more after I called police - and there are lights running over there at night.

The end of the story is that he is going to have someone come over next week and make an initial inspection.  I am going to have to look through my notes and find this woman's name and phone number that I talked with last week and ask what, exactly, happened to her promise of sending someone out there.

Never-ending battle.  But, as one lady I was speaking with today noted, the City of Phoenix has some great employees that do their jobs well and then there are the idiots - her words - that are incompetent and have no business even working there.  Selah.

So last night, this horrific smell comes into my room.  I assume someone out there cooking something - nasty from the smell of it.
Well, I was awake anyway.  There was a thunderstorm with loud booms going off every few minutes, seconds, intermittent - couldn't sleep through all that noise.

After a while, the noise finally subsided and I went back to sleep.

I came out here - my kitchen - this morning and it smells unbelievably bad in here.

The kid tenant - the 22 year old.  This is what Lynnette just came out and informed.
She said she came out here last night after the smell hit their room, found a pot of beans on the stove, the burner was on high, the entire living room/kitchen/hallway filled with smoke, the beans looked as though they were going to start a fire.

Are you serious?  This isn't the worst of it.  That guy just left it like that.  In other words, he turned that all on and NEVER showed back up to turn it off.  Lynnette went and knocked on his door, he didn't answer.  She didn't know if he was in there or had left.  That kid is going to hear about it from me.  I can see - maybe - turning on the burner on low and slowly cooking the beans, but anytime you turn the burner on high, you better be around to watch it because the burner ring turns bright orange and it gets VERY hot.  Whatever you are cooking - usually on that high of a setting you are just wanting to boil water - it isn't going to take long.

The pot is ruined.  He will be replacing that pot and he will be offering some kind of explanation of why, exactly, he thought it okay to turn that thing on and then just leave/disappear - or he will be getting and eviction notice.  Pretty strange, the guy is usually a pretty responsible person.

But, it reminds me of Mary.  A former tenant who was on methamphetamines who did exactly the same thing one night.  The smoke detectors went off, I woke up obviously, went out to find a pot of water, boiling away, burner on high, no-one to be found.  In that case, though, we had already agreed that she was leaving - actually, I had given her an eviction notice because she wouldn't stop the meth - there was already tension between us and she came in from outside and started screaming at me.

Now, that pot of water was at a high boil and she didn't reappear for 10 minutes or more after I turned it off, removed the pan, dumped the water, cleaned the pot, put it away, put her box of macaroni away, wiped down the counters, all that good stuff.  That was the night she called the police on me but I turned it back around on her and had her served with the restraining order papers.

Now, for the kid tenant to do something like what he did, I do have to wonder if there are drugs involved with this or maybe he was drunk or something. I have no idea, but I will definitely be finding out and also looking into why the smoke detectors didn't go off.  They are both hard wired and battery juiced for electricity.  Even if the batteries were dead, they still should have gone off.  It's a damn good thing Mark and Lynnette came out and discovered that mess, cause' Gilbert just left it like that.  Eventually there would have been a fire.

No, that does not make me happy.  I have already had one house burn down, I never want to go through that again.  Gilbert and I are destined to have a frank, curt and unambiguous discussion in the very near future.

My house really stinks right now.  Same kind of thing when that other tenant put popcorn in the microwave and had it in there for 5 minutes.  The house filled up with so much smoke, you couldn't see anything and it destroyed the microwave.  It will smell for days, undoubtedly, in here. It's tooooooo hot to open up the house and air it out.  But, if it smells this bad when I get home from work, I may just have to open up the doors and windows for a few hours and try to get some of the stench out of here.

Gag.