Hal Bidlack
Only one poor soul has been forced to read my columns twice each week for the past 276 essays and that long-suffering person is my kindly editor. This saintly individual, whom I shall call “Dan the Suffering,” (but only because that is his name) must wade through the detritus that erupts from my semi-weekly treatises to make sure I am writing clearly as well as using terms correctly, such as “semi-weekly,” rather than “bi-weekly,” which means every two weeks. Editors must know these things. (Ed: it’s true, we are pretty impressive people).
Therefore, such editors likely pick up on common themes that trend across a writer’s compositions, and some regular readers may do the same. Some, for example, will note how often I return to the idea that our rights as Americans are often in conflict with the rights of other Americans. Readers may well recall my oft referenced notion of individual rights as expressed by Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who argued that limits on rights can be best understood by the idea that your right to swing your arm ends where my nose begins (Ed: yes, we’ve heard that before).
I like to talk about rights. When I was teaching at the AF Academy, I’d often poke at my students’ ideologies by suggesting scenarios wherein they would have to decide between two seemingly equally valid rights that were in conflict. Such mental exercises help one understand that the Founders, when meeting in Philadelphia to draft the Constitution, didn’t actually settle much. We still must face the challenges of rights in conflict, such as big states versus small states, rich and poor, north and south, race, gender, orientation, and many more.
Which, of course, brings me to your grandma.
I live in Colorado Springs in an area with a homeowners association. It was in existence when I bought the house, and I understood that various rules applied to how I maintain my property. I think HOAs are often a good thing, but like most folks, I do occasionally chafe under what can seem like silly applications of the rules. Is it really a terrible thing that my travel trailer was in my driveway for two days, as we got ready for a camping trip? But I digress…
A recent article in the Colorado Springs Gazette told of the City Council’s acceptance of a revised plan for “granny flats” in the city. It seems that some residents want to build what are essentially apartments onto their existing homes or on their property. As these types of constructions are often for elderly family members, they got named “granny flats.”
So here we see another example of rights in conflict. On the one hand, who is the city to tell me what I can and cannot build on my own property? Libertarians of the world, unite! But on the other hand, am I really going to be ok if my neighbor, for example, decides to build an additional structure on his property in the form of another single-family home? How about a new two-story workshop? A small factory to make stuff? I’ve known a couple of folks who had to negotiate with their neighbors about building a small observatory for their telescopes. How far does swinging one’s arm (to, say, swing a hammer and build something) have to go before it hits a neighbor’s nose?
The compromise in Colorado Springs for such flats and cottages is that if you build the new apartment-thingie for members of your own family, you are ok. But if you want to build something for a second and different family, you need to go through a public approval process.
This new policy illustrates a couple of important themes to which I often refer. First, it reminds us that local government tends to be the most impactful level of governance for most folks. Sure, we like to talk about Trump and Biden and argue about national stuff, but the part of government that has the most power to change our daily lives is your local government. And second, to repeat what I said above, rights remain in conflict, and that is both a good thing and a source of many governing challenges.
My own libertarian streak causes me to think that people should be able to do what they want to on their own property. But I admit my hypocrisy, as I also don’t want my next-door neighbors building a for-profit kennel to board dogs with barking disorders in their backyard either. Arms keep swinging, and noses keep moving around.
At the end of the day, I suspect the City Council here got it about right, but time will tell. In the meantime, remember that a granny flat isn’t the name of a band (though it would be a good one) and keep an eye on where your own arm is swinging.
Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.
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May 26, 2020 at 01:30PM
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BIDLACK | Who's right when rights collide? | Opinion - coloradopolitics.com
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