Frustration

Last month Bonnie and I asked the ladies at our monthly luncheon if they would like to have a yard sale, with pretty much everyone saying yes. So we volunteered to organize a community sale. It was suppose to be a very simple thing, we would put an advertisement in the local Winter Texan paper, some fliers up in area RV parks and anyone wanting to dispose of their good junk could put it out on their lot and hope a guppy (oops I mean customer) would come along.

Well the first road block was actually our own Retama Village Committee. There was a question on if we would be violating the Covenants by having a sale within a year since there was one last March. I knew there wasn't as I'd taken the five seconds to run a search on our on-line Covenants & found the section that pertained to having yard/garage/moving sales no more than once a year but the rule was referring to individuals. This was finally settled after sending a email to the the chairman of the committee with a cc to the CEO and Owner of our park asking them to, read the covenant (which I gave the section # along with coping/pasting the wording) and make a decision, either we can or can't. I think I may have said this in a little stronger message but this gives you an idea.

I was told that we may have to have a City permit which a committee member said would check on this. As it turned out we did need one, so Bonnie and I said we would go pick it up.

Hench the 2nd road block - we go to City Hall yesterday expecting to pay our $5.00 fee and get the permit. At that time we were told by the girl behind the glass that if there was going to be a sale on individual lots each person would have to come in and get their own permit and pay the $5.00. We tried to explain this was a RV gated community not a subdivision with houses and it was only for 3 hours one Sat. morning. No go. So asked to see the supervisor which we were able to do. He said if we had it in the clubhouse and everyone brought it there we would only need one permit. Explained to him our clubhouse is not like others as we don't have a large room for this type of thing and with 3 pools the patio wouldn't be a safe area either. Oh and in order to get the permit we would need to bring a copy of the minutes showing approval by the committee and a OK letter from the board. So Bonnie and I decided we would each purchase a permit and find a couple of other people do get one and just open our lots up to everyone.

I'm beginning to think there was something more to this "road block" with the Permit Person. There are yard sales all over this area on individual lots and I've never seen a permit posted on their lot as we're suppose to do. There's a chance these parks aren't even getting any permits but they have these sales at least once if not twice a year. You would think someone from the Permit Dept would notice. This supervisor seem to know exactly where the park was by just saying Retama (there are over 500 parks in this county) and he mentioned the owner and CEO by name. So we're thinking maybe with all the permits that our developer has needed (which I'm sure are 100's) he may have stepped on this guys toes and we are getting the result of it. Maybe not, only my opinion but sure doesn't make sense pulling this for a three hour sale.

On another note - Larry's cold really hit him hard Monday night so I'm really trying to stay away from him. As I've said before, this is not easy when you live in 400 sq feet. Tuesday morning I worked on going through all last years papers/receipts and tossing what I could. For doing all personal business on line I sure still had enough paper. That afternoon even though it was chilly outside Danielle and I went for our bike ride. Only got to four miles but also spent time on my exercise chair (got one of those AB's chairs) and went for a walk. So that was good.

Major cold front coming through on Thursday. More later on that. Till next time..................