Move your own fence, says Woodside council Move your own fence, says Woodside council (December 28, 2005)

By Andrea Gemmet

Almanac Staff Writer

If someone builds a fence in the wrong place, who is responsible for moving it?

Future Woodside resident Paul Edwards made a case for having the town foot the bill for relocating a fence on his property in the 100 block of Mountain Home Road.

The fence is 6 feet closer to the road than Woodside regulations allow, slightly exceeds the 6-foot height limit in places, and veers on to his neighbor's property by as much as 18 inches.

Mr. Edwards argued that town officials should have realized that the plans for the fence broke Woodside regulations and that they shouldn't have issued a permit for it. He has filed a claim against the town for the cost of moving the fence, said Town Manager Susan George.

At the December 13 Town Council meeting, Mr. Edwards asked the council to overturn Planning Director Hope Sullivan's decision to record a code violation against the property. The council declined to do so on a 7-0 vote.

"I've personally been trying to resolve this for six months," Ms. Sullivan told the council. "You pay me to enforce the rules. This is in violation. I don't see any other resolution than to record a notice of code violation."

Ms. Sullivan told the council that Mr. Edwards could apply to the town's Architectural and Site Review Board for an exception to the rules or remove the offending fence in order to prevent the code violation from being recorded.

"I sound like a pretty bad guy here, but really I'm not," Mr. Edwards told the council. "(The planner) issued a permit for me to build a fence and that was the fence I built."

Mr. Edwards said he wanted town staff to admit that they had made a mistake in issuing the permit and apologize to him, as well as pay for the fence relocation. It was his contractor's error that caused the fence to infringe onto the property of his neighbors John and Kimberly McMorrow, but it was the building and planning staff's fault that they didn't see on the plans that the fence was only 4 feet from a private road, Mr. Edwards said.

Town Council members, squinting at the drawings submitted with the plans, said that nowhere was anything marked as a fence. They also noted that the application for the fence permit signed by his wife Sylvia stated that the fence would comply with town rules, which were spelled out on the reverse side of the permit: 6-foot-tall fences must be 10 feet back from the paved surface of private roads.

"You can't hold the town responsible for catching every error on every plan," said Councilman Pete Sinclair. "You made the error, and the smoking gun here is the application."

Mr. Edwards said he is in the process of building a house on the property.

"You've got a big project ahead of you," said Councilwoman Sue Boynton. "You need to make sure your plans are accurate."

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