Oak Park Drops Gardening Charges Against Julie Bass, Goes After Her Dogs

[The Northerner]

The city may not have the dirt it needs on Julie Bass's garden, so it's going after the farm animals instead.

Prosecutors in Oak Park, Mich., have dropped a misdemeanor charge against Bass, who until yesterday was staring down a July 26 court date and potential 93 days in jail for planting and refusing to remove a vegetable garden on her front lawn.

The Bass family vegetable garden generated a national media stir as the family battled city prosecutors who claimed that cabbages, peppers and tomatoes were not "suitable" for the front yard.

In the past weeks, the city threatened Bass with a warning, ticket and finally, the misdemeanor charge, none of which persuaded Bass to dig up the garden.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/15/julie-bass-front-yard-gar_n_899723.html

[flvegan]

1. Careful, Oak Park.

Going after veggies and then dogs? That's a dog whistle best left unblown, no pun intended.

[xchrom]

2. Recommend

[Liberal_in_LA]

3. k&r

[MADem]

4. She should just slap up a picket fence and tell those jerks to stay off her property.

And she really needs to pay the dog license fee on time.

[tuckessee]

5. The fence would probably be a violation of codes.

Odds are they wouldn't issue a permit even if it isn't.

Telling code enforcers or city busybodies to stay off a property is an invitation to have a SWAT team pay a visit. I've seen it happen. That's the way these petty dictators work.

[MADem]

6. I'll bet a nice little friendly fence is no problem. It's not in most places.

I'm not talking about a fortress fence.

I think the issue is that her lawn looks "different." If she had even a short picket fence up, her planting beds would be less noticeable.

[Cobalt-60]

8. her lawn looks....delicious!

You can bet its the local 'food' merchants behind this harassment.

[MADem]

9. Naah, I'll bet it's her nosy neighbors, worried about their property values.

I don't see anything wrong with what she's doing, but I find that if you adopt the Japanese 'Nail that sticks up gets hammered down' approach when doing anything out of the ordinary, you tend to get less guff. A small picket fence with maybe a few 'distracting' hanging baskets of flowers, and perhaps they'd have less in the way of issues about her choice of lawn plantings.

[saras]

7. As long as we've bloviating about what SHOULD happen...

she SHOULD go on with her garden and her pets.

The prosecuters, and everyone supporting them, need to be STOPPED the same way you stop a kid from calling names and hitting someone just because they got a bee in their bonnet - maybe they're racist, maybe they have hemorrhoids, who knows. FIRST the timeout, THEN the education.

Okay, given that there's a bunch of stupid laws in place, and a bunch or stupid people who won't go away, maybe that won't happen quite like that.

One can hope.

[MADem]

10. I agree about the garden, as to the pets, she didn't pay her license fee on time.

You have to be a good citizen in your community and pay your pet licenses. It's a public safety issue. Licensed pets are up to date with their mandated shots. If I had to be bit by a dog, I'd rather it be one that is licensed. She's taken care of that now, so she's back in good graces on that score.

[mitchtv]

12. meanwhile they are paying

to get people to take out their lawns around here, to save water

[KurtNYC]

11. Grass-cism: government mandated lawns n/t

[L0oniX]

13. CALL HLS IMMEDIATELY! This is clearly a threat to farmers all over the USA.