Some of you know that I’ve been pretty busy working on some special projects. Well, I felt it was time to let you know about one of those projects.
Recently, the Town of Christiansburg started posting public documents online, at their webpage, htt://christiansburg.org. Pretty kewl. They finally started letting in a bit of sunshine. Or, did they.
On the main page of the website, click on the Town Codes link on the right hand side.
You will note that you have the option of downloading the Complete Town Code, or you can download/open each individual Section and Chapter from that same page. Pretty kewl…..you can either download a big bulky file that seems to take forever or you can find that same information in a smaller, easier to use version by Chapter.
HOWEVER, that may be what it looks like, but that isn’t the case. You see, some of the Chapters do not match up with the Chapters in the Complete Town Code Document. Sometimes whole pages are missing from the short forms, whole subsections.
That’s not so good. Guess that means you should download the Complete Town Code and use it, eh? HOWEVER, you have to be careful there too. If you do a line-by-line comparison (I really was considered to be a darned good investigator in my day), you will find that the ‘cites’ of state codes are much, much older in the short versions than in the Complete Town Code version.
I kinda felt it was okay since at least one of those sets of documents was being kept up to date. HOWEVER (I gotta get a special key that automatically puts that ‘HOWEVER’ in the way things are going), the cites at the bottom of each entry are used to denote when the ordinance has been changed and what state code was the basis for said change. Going back to that old-fashioned investigative technique of a line by line comparison. There are no changes. Where one document notes a last cite of 2002, and the other shows a cite of 2007, one could reasonably expect the text to be a little bit different. It isn’t. Don’t take my word for it, look for yourself. In fact, I could use some help since I am working on the entire Town Code, not just one section.
One of the best examples of this is the Erosion and Sediment Control portion of the Town Code, Chapter 10.
Now, I am taking all of those references to State Code and comparing them to existing Town Codes. Bet you didn’t know that all of those $100 fines the Town has been diligently NOT slapping on violaters is the minimum fine under state law. Talk about lost revenue. The Town is allowed to set those fines at anywhere from $100 to $1000 dollars. (The Blacksburg Code has them set at $500.)
Just who is the Town trying to help here? Citizens or builders? Gotta wonder.
